>lol...maximizing shareholder value is a cause of sagging productivity? Here's the longer paper the author wrote a couple years ago that explains his reasoning

>lol...maximizing shareholder value is a cause of sagging productivity? Here's the longer paper the author wrote a couple years ago that explains his reasoning. You may disagree with his argument, but to dismiss it outright as having no merit says more about you than it does about the author or the NYT. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/lazonick.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/lazonic... >Once the problems of strategic control have been addressed, the process of taking back the corporation can turn to the critical role of organizational integration. Productivity in an advanced economy depends on the extent to which members of the labor force have the opportunity to engage in collective and cumulative learning over the course of careers that may span 40 years or more. Under the Old Economy business model, major corporations supported this social condition through the norm of a career with one company, albeit almost exclusively for white males. It is unrealistic to assume that in a world of open-systems technologies and intense global competition the norm of a career with one company could, or should, be restored. That does not, however, lessen the need for collective and cumulative careers as the employment foundation of a highly productive economy. It is reasonable to believe that in the provision of lifelong learning through on-the-job experience, government agencies and civil society organizations, including universities, will have to continue to play important, and perhaps even growing, roles. The business corporation, however, will have to anchor a national system of career employment through a retain-and-reinvest resource-allocation regime. Jettison the downsize-and-distribute ideology of MSV, and U.S. business corporations can focus on becoming learning organizations once again. >If hundreds of billions of dollars annually stop flowing out of the nation’s major corporations to do buybacks, then vast amounts of resources will become available to provide the financial commitment that innovation requires.84 Ban buybacks, and companies will be able to use these funds not only, or even primarily, to finance capital expenditures but more importantly to attract, train, retain, and motivate their career employees. In high-tech companies a significant proportion of these employees will be engaged in R&D, but the innovative enterprise needs experienced and motivated employees in a range of other functions as well. And some of the funds made available by a buyback ban can flow to the government as tax revenues to enable it to invest in physical infrastructure and human knowledge that can underpin the next generation of innovation.