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This is because management would like the company - employee relationship to not be a purely business one. There is some kind of fictitious betrayal involved in

This is because management would like the company - employee relationship to not be a purely business one. There is some kind of fictitious betrayal involved in what you described. From the pov of the employee, they are just updating the price for their services. What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal?

horsawlarway 4y ago
> What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal? They often do just that. Usually through government actions that limit or cap price increases in goods, or policies that discriminate against companies based on previous behavior. Last time the US had a real run at it was the Nixon price/wage caps in the 70s, but it's definitely getting traction again when we're seeing corporate taxes at historic lows, profits at historic highs, and inflation popping up again as a real risk. This whole "trust" thing is a big fucking deal, regardless of what folks might like to think, and it absolutely does extend to the relationship corporations have with the public. I personally don't think the controls usually work the way they're intended (it's mostly bad news), but I don't mind the punishment aspect of them in regards to betrayed trust.
barrkel 4y ago
Thing is, companies aren't just a web of contracted individuals. Companies gain efficiencies from reduced transaction costs; this is the basic theory of the firm, the reason we have firms at all. One of the big ways transaction costs are reduced is by increased trust, trust at the human level. Interactions don't need lots of checks and guards and ass-covering because there's mutual trust, at a human level, that people are working together on a profit-making enterprise. Breaking trust affects efficiency. If someone threatens to leave, you can't make future plans that assume they're in place. People aren't cogs that can be trivially replaced; on-the-job knowledge makes people more productive and takes time to acquire. So if someone's future presence is uncertain, timelines stretch, more people need to be allocated to it to account for risk of people leaving, and so on. And this affects other trust relationships further out. A manager of a team or a product area may not be able to deliver on commitments that serve a strategic purpose of the company directed at a higher level. It's not "purely business". Businesses run on trust; companies are collections of individuals with a higher degree of mutual trust, and the more trust they have, the more they can eliminate inefficiencies caused by lacking trust. That's why companies work at all.

horsawlarway 4y ago

> What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal? They often do just that. Usually through government actions that limit or cap price increases in goods, or policies that discriminate against companies based on previous behavior. Last time the US had a real run at it was the Nixon price/wage caps in the 70s, but it's definitely getting traction again when we're seeing corporate taxes at historic lows, profits at historic highs, and inflation popping up again as a real risk. This whole "trust" thing is a big fucking deal, regardless of what folks might like to think, and it absolutely does extend to the relationship corporations have with the public. I personally don't think the controls usually work the way they're intended (it's mostly bad news), but I don't mind the punishment aspect of them in regards to betrayed trust.

barrkel 4y ago

Thing is, companies aren't just a web of contracted individuals. Companies gain efficiencies from reduced transaction costs; this is the basic theory of the firm, the reason we have firms at all. One of the big ways transaction costs are reduced is by increased trust, trust at the human level. Interactions don't need lots of checks and guards and ass-covering because there's mutual trust, at a human level, that people are working together on a profit-making enterprise. Breaking trust affects efficiency. If someone threatens to leave, you can't make future plans that assume they're in place. People aren't cogs that can be trivially replaced; on-the-job knowledge makes people more productive and takes time to acquire. So if someone's future presence is uncertain, timelines stretch, more people need to be allocated to it to account for risk of people leaving, and so on. And this affects other trust relationships further out. A manager of a team or a product area may not be able to deliver on commitments that serve a strategic purpose of the company directed at a higher level. It's not "purely business". Businesses run on trust; companies are collections of individuals with a higher degree of mutual trust, and the more trust they have, the more they can eliminate inefficiencies caused by lacking trust. That's why companies work at all.