5 ms·
Aren't executives just doing what the board wants, and the board just following what the owners want?
by whatwherewhy 4y ago
Aren't executives just doing what the board wants, and the board just following what the owners want?
- delusional 4y agoAnd the owners what the market wants. Really you, the consumer, is responsible!
- whatwherewhy 4y agoWell not really. The owners are ultimately responsible for the company's behavior.
- judge2020 4y agoAnd yet the owners rely on the market/consumer giving them money to put food on the table and afford a roof over their head. Which is to say, user?id=delusional above was mostly joking.
- feet 4y agoCorporations respond to profit motives above all else, but there are still humans making those decisions within the corporations
- lazide 4y agoThe shareholders will end up with the valuation they end up with, but are immune from prosecution in all but the most explicit and egregious cases. If they vote in directors, which they suspect will hire a criminal CEO, that’s enough levels of indirection that unless they write a memo explicitly stating to do so (and maybe even then!), the worst outcome for them is the valuation of the company drops to zero and they lose their capital, minus whatever dividends have been pulled out. That is barring potential criminal conspiracy anyway, which would require concrete actions in furtherance of a conspiracy, which would be difficult to prove without something like that memo.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoLook we were all just following orders.
- john2x 4y agoChemical and electrical orders
- iso1631 4y agoThe consumer does what the marketeers want, which do what the executives want, and round we go. It's a vicious cycle of inefficiency from people trying to get larger parts of the pie rather than growing the pie.
- whatwherewhy 4y agoIsn't creating new markets the canonical strategy of doing startups?
- legulere 4y agoYou might enjoy reading meditations on moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- delusional 4y agoAfter reading the first two chapters I'm hooked. Thanks a ton for recommending it.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoTo be fair, this is how causality works. It's not only about who did it. In practice the ball rolls as much because it was kicked as because it is round and because it isn't made of solid lead.
- yunohn 4y agoTFA is about Board Executives.