3 ms·

> If an executive approves a design that kills people, they should be responsible. Do you really think it's executives approving design specifics such as mater

by sofixa 3y ago

> If an executive approves a design that kills people, they should be responsible. Do you really think it's executives approving design specifics such as materials used? > The idea that the substantially lower paid employee who thinks "this looks like a reasonable choice" is more responsible than the ostensibly more competent, and again certainly compensated as such, that approves of the approach Unfortunately competency in the actual field is never a requirement for management and executives. There are whole diplomas and schools founded upon the principle that management is management and business is business, regardless of the field and what is actually being managed. So thinking executives have any competencies outside of maybe managing people and business is misguided hope. Yes, executives should be held responsible for big failures at their companies (and not getting tens of millions of dollars in a golden parachute and retiring with yachts). But that doesn't mean that the people who actually designed, QAed, approved the design should get off free.

theshrike79 3y ago
> Do you really think it's executives approving design specifics such as materials used? The executives approve and oversee the compensation structure that allows for stuff like this. They also foster a culture where whistleblowing about cancerous materials or reports about people suffering when using their devices isn't encouraged or protected. Yes, they should be held responsible. That's why they get paid millions and get huge option packages, because of the massive responsibility. (not really, they get paid $$$ because they know the right people and went to private school with them)
- sofixa 3y ago
  All that you said is true, but that doesn't absolve the actual people who actually made the dangerous decisions of their responsibility. Regardless of your work environment, if you make a decision that you know is dangerous and kills people, it's your fault too, and you should be criminally charged alongside those above you that didn't catch it, or enabled it through shitty culture, or enforced it due to time/money pressure.
  - olliej 3y ago
    I didn't say that no one other than executives are responsible. I'm saying that the executives making the decisions, and being compensated for the risk/responsibility (again, this is their own justification for exorbitant compensation), are at minimum just as criminally responsible as the much lower paid person that may make the original choice. But it's also not a given that that the lower ranked (and paid) individual is the one who has liability - they may reasonably believe the material or product design is safe, because they don't have all the information the company as a whole has, and again, it's the job of the executives to ensure that all the information the company has is correctly considered and routed to the right people, and if that doesn't happen, then the responsibility is on the executives who failed to ensure that happened. If the executives of a company have demonstrated that they will penalize people for raising safety concerns, they're definitionally taking full responsibility for any consequences of that, including a failure to do full safety analysis in the first place. Similarly if the executives approve employment contracts that include penalties for reporting safety concerns externally they're responsible (non-executive employees aren't likely being paid enough to afford a lawyer to determine whether or not such contract terms are legal, let alone being able to afford being laid off if they're wrong). Finally, in this case, it's very clear Philips was aware of the problems with this device and intentionally hid that information, and I really don't think that was the decision of some random low level employee. Again, before you go and blame the low level employee, if they're just being told "this is not a real issue and is being overblown" how are they expected to know differently? The lower ranked/paid someone is the higher the perceived risk of asking "are you sure that's accurate?" or similarly rocking the boat. Obviously this is on a scale (don't explicitly put this in our safety notes vs destroy all the documents we have on this issue, the latter should trigger at least a "I'll confirm with legal the exact documents to destroy and CC you" from anyone). But again, if a company is in that position, or employees believe asking about safety issues can result in penalization or termination, that's due to the actions of the executives, and so again, they are liable for the outcome. The model you're advocating is the mob model of 'I didn't explicitly say "poison someone", one of my associates misunderstood me and went too far, but I didn't break the law'
- vdaea 3y ago
  You keep moving the goalposts. I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. In a big company it's impossible for a single person to know everything that's happening at every level.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    Here, as an exec, i'll offer a reason: They are paid to be liable, and usually have the explicit authority to bind the company with their decisions (IE signing/etc authority). Part of the job is to be accountable for the decisions your organization makes, whether you made them personally or not. The buck stops here, so to speak. This is intentional - in large companies actual responsibility for failure can be so diffuse that nobody would otherwise ever held accountable. If you break down what happened here into pieces: 1. Root cause of problem 2. Responsibility for the problem 3. Accountability for the problem 4. What accountability looks like This amounts to: 1 is "someone chose to use the wrong foam" for $reasons. 2 is whoever did that, probably not an exec. In large companies, or complex problems, responsibility can also be very spread out. 3 is what we are discussing - I would argue strongly that executives should be held civilly accountable for the decisions made by their organizations and criminally accountable for decisions made by their organization that they had direct knowledge of. In general, execs usually are indemnified by the company for reasonable business decisions they make, so holding them civilly liable will not result in personal liabilty for them except to the degree they lied/hid/committed fraud, which is basically what you want. 4 i honestly have no idea what to do here.
    - emacsen 3y ago
      The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case. Here there's evidence of a coverup- of deaths reported and Phillips choosing to not disclose or recall until forced to. An argument could be made that until that point, there's no action by the executive that is wrong- though again, it's a medical device so it should be held up to high standards. Once the company had reason to believe that their device could be dangerous, it had a duty to act. Executives were surely notified when there was a liability concern, and the decision not to act on them is the trigger event. Was it the CEO? Maybe not? Phillips is a huge corporation, but I'd venture a guess that even in a company that size, there's a bit of "pass the buck" and higher up executives knew something of the situation, and if someone knew of deaths, they had a responsibility to look into it.

by sofixa 3y ago

theshrike79 3y ago

> Do you really think it's executives approving design specifics such as materials used? The executives approve and oversee the compensation structure that allows for stuff like this. They also foster a culture where whistleblowing about cancerous materials or reports about people suffering when using their devices isn't encouraged or protected. Yes, they should be held responsible. That's why they get paid millions and get huge option packages, because of the massive responsibility. (not really, they get paid $$$ because they know the right people and went to private school with them)

sofixa 3y ago
All that you said is true, but that doesn't absolve the actual people who actually made the dangerous decisions of their responsibility. Regardless of your work environment, if you make a decision that you know is dangerous and kills people, it's your fault too, and you should be criminally charged alongside those above you that didn't catch it, or enabled it through shitty culture, or enforced it due to time/money pressure.
- olliej 3y ago
  I didn't say that no one other than executives are responsible. I'm saying that the executives making the decisions, and being compensated for the risk/responsibility (again, this is their own justification for exorbitant compensation), are at minimum just as criminally responsible as the much lower paid person that may make the original choice. But it's also not a given that that the lower ranked (and paid) individual is the one who has liability - they may reasonably believe the material or product design is safe, because they don't have all the information the company as a whole has, and again, it's the job of the executives to ensure that all the information the company has is correctly considered and routed to the right people, and if that doesn't happen, then the responsibility is on the executives who failed to ensure that happened. If the executives of a company have demonstrated that they will penalize people for raising safety concerns, they're definitionally taking full responsibility for any consequences of that, including a failure to do full safety analysis in the first place. Similarly if the executives approve employment contracts that include penalties for reporting safety concerns externally they're responsible (non-executive employees aren't likely being paid enough to afford a lawyer to determine whether or not such contract terms are legal, let alone being able to afford being laid off if they're wrong). Finally, in this case, it's very clear Philips was aware of the problems with this device and intentionally hid that information, and I really don't think that was the decision of some random low level employee. Again, before you go and blame the low level employee, if they're just being told "this is not a real issue and is being overblown" how are they expected to know differently? The lower ranked/paid someone is the higher the perceived risk of asking "are you sure that's accurate?" or similarly rocking the boat. Obviously this is on a scale (don't explicitly put this in our safety notes vs destroy all the documents we have on this issue, the latter should trigger at least a "I'll confirm with legal the exact documents to destroy and CC you" from anyone). But again, if a company is in that position, or employees believe asking about safety issues can result in penalization or termination, that's due to the actions of the executives, and so again, they are liable for the outcome. The model you're advocating is the mob model of 'I didn't explicitly say "poison someone", one of my associates misunderstood me and went too far, but I didn't break the law'
vdaea 3y ago
You keep moving the goalposts. I don't see why the executives should be liable as long as they didn't personally choose the foam or hid the complaints. In a big company it's impossible for a single person to know everything that's happening at every level.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  Here, as an exec, i'll offer a reason: They are paid to be liable, and usually have the explicit authority to bind the company with their decisions (IE signing/etc authority). Part of the job is to be accountable for the decisions your organization makes, whether you made them personally or not. The buck stops here, so to speak. This is intentional - in large companies actual responsibility for failure can be so diffuse that nobody would otherwise ever held accountable. If you break down what happened here into pieces: 1. Root cause of problem 2. Responsibility for the problem 3. Accountability for the problem 4. What accountability looks like This amounts to: 1 is "someone chose to use the wrong foam" for $reasons. 2 is whoever did that, probably not an exec. In large companies, or complex problems, responsibility can also be very spread out. 3 is what we are discussing - I would argue strongly that executives should be held civilly accountable for the decisions made by their organizations and criminally accountable for decisions made by their organization that they had direct knowledge of. In general, execs usually are indemnified by the company for reasonable business decisions they make, so holding them civilly liable will not result in personal liabilty for them except to the degree they lied/hid/committed fraud, which is basically what you want. 4 i honestly have no idea what to do here.
  - emacsen 3y ago
    The argument that the execs must be the one to choose the foam to be liable is a bit silly. While in some white collar crimes, you will find individual actions by execs, such as in banking and tobacco, that's rarely the case. Here there's evidence of a coverup- of deaths reported and Phillips choosing to not disclose or recall until forced to. An argument could be made that until that point, there's no action by the executive that is wrong- though again, it's a medical device so it should be held up to high standards. Once the company had reason to believe that their device could be dangerous, it had a duty to act. Executives were surely notified when there was a liability concern, and the decision not to act on them is the trigger event. Was it the CEO? Maybe not? Phillips is a huge corporation, but I'd venture a guess that even in a company that size, there's a bit of "pass the buck" and higher up executives knew something of the situation, and if someone knew of deaths, they had a responsibility to look into it.