“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world” — Jack Welch, 2009. As GE’s CEO in the 80s, however, Welch championed corporate focus on shareholder returns. “Converts to the creed”, the Economist
summarizes, “had little time for other ‘stakeholders’: customers, employees, suppliers, society at large and so forth.” What went wrong? Steve Denning
describes how such a stance is counterproductive, creates turmoil in capitalism and fosters an environment in which “CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.”
posted by the mad poster!
on Dec 27, 2011 -
38 comments
One year after the
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which, overturning over 100 years of precedent, opened a floodgate of corporate money into election campaigns, Virginia Lyons (D-VT), has introduced
legislation (full text of bill not yet available, articles
here and
here) in the Vermont State Senate to amend the United States Constitution to explicitly state that corporations are
not persons.
This would overturn the controversial notion of
corporate personhood which was established in the 1800s. Controversial not only for the unequal distribution of rights and responsibilities among humans and corporations, some, like
Thom Hartmann (
previously), have claimed that the notion of corporate personhood was established as an
intentional misinterpretation of the decision as recorded by court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis, former president of the Newburgh & New York Railway Co.
[more inside]
posted by laminarial
on Jan 24, 2011 -
102 comments
At InfoSecuity 2002, an annual corporate security conference, new "computer forensics" software is on display, including software
"that allows corporate IT folks to research employees' criminal histories, credit information, financial asset details, friends and associates. "
The software is called
Red Alert 2.0, and more specifically the research software is an optional subscription based add-on called Intelligent Information Dossier plus. Isn't this tantamount to your employer spying on your private life, in real time?
As I work for a very large
military contractor myself, I could easily see something like this being used where I work. Would you feel comfortable working for a company that uses this sort of intrusive software?
posted by SweetJesus
on Dec 13, 2002 -
21 comments
This explains everything! Mystified by the recent flurry of corporate meltdowns? Do you find yourself thinking: "Are those CEOs CRAZY?" Well maybe they are!
posted by BGM
on Aug 29, 2002 -
14 comments
"To compile The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, we used the most narrow and conservative of definitions -- corporations that have pled guilty or no contest to crimes and have been criminally fined." Just brimming with fascinating business lore, including "The FBI estimates that 19,000 Americans are murdered every year. Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer
products...."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on May 31, 2002 -
39 comments
corporate totalitarianism and the ftaa: Activists will gather in Quebec City, Canada on April 11, 2001 to protest the upcoming Summit of the Americas (SOA) meeting. The purpose of the SOA, which will be held April 18-22, is to hammer out the first full text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a proposed agreement that would turn the entire Western Hemisphere (except Cuba) into the largest international trading bloc in history.
posted by kliuless
on Apr 10, 2001 -
3 comments
