I believe it is socially and morally unforgivable when managers reap huge profits for themselves but fire workers.
I am for the free market. Even though it doesn’t work too well, nothing else works at all. But I have serious reservations about capitalism as a system because it idolizes economics as the be-all and end-all of life. It is one-dimensional. For example, I have often advised managers that a 20-1 salary ratio between senior executives and rank-and-file white-collar workers is the limit beyond which they cannot go if they don’t want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies.
Today, I believe it is socially and morally unforgivable when managers reap huge profits for themselves but fire workers. As societies, we will pay a heavy price for the contempt this generates among middle managers and workers. In short, whole dimensions of what it means to be a human being and treated as one are not incorporated into the economic calculus of capitalism. For such a myopic system to dominate other aspects of life is not good for any society.
ACTION POINT: Have executives in your organization reaped huge profits for themselves while laying off significant numbers of workers? Enumerate the ways these policies have led to contempt and falling morale.
Managing in the Next Society
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker