Merit Is Irrelevant In The Corporate Boardroom

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:



Merit Is Irrelevant In The Corporate Boardroom
by Jonathan Tasini

Monday 28 of December, 2009


Merit is one of the enduring standards we are all taught from the moment we start school. If you get good grades, you advance. If you perform well, you advance. What, then, are we supposed to think about the young children or college-age students who read about this, courtesy of The Times Gretchen Morgenson (who may be the only reporter in the traditional media who consistently calls the business world on the carpet for unethical and immoral conduct):

YOU might think that board members overseeing businesses that cratered in the credit crisis would be disqualified from serving as directors at other public companies.

You would, however, be wrong.

Directors who were supposedly minding the store as disaster struck at companies like Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual or Fannie Mae have not all been banished from other boardrooms. In many cases, directors just seem to skate away from company woes that occurred on their watch.

To some investors, this is an example of the refusal of those involved in the debacle to accept responsibility for it. Whether you are talking about top executives loading up on leverage, regulators who slept while companies took on titanic risks or mortgage lenders that made thousands of dubious loans, few in this crowd have acknowledged culpability. Taxpayers and shareholders, meanwhile, who had nothing to do with the problems, are left holding the bag.

“None of these directors have stood up and said, ‘We made a mistake here by not calling management to account,’ ” said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. “They have certainly avoided the limelight as far as blame is concerned.”

Moreover, they continue to get work as directors at other companies. (emphasis added)

So, the people who have suffered from the credit crisis have NOT BEEN the people who created the crisis. Rather, the only people who bear the brunt are those who were essentially innocent bystanders--the average person who is now unemployed in the greatest employment crisis in generations.

Merit is irrelevant in the business world. It's all about access and who you know--either in the board room or in Washington. This is what people are rightly furious about.


http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=14641

[damntexdem]

1. Perhaps irrelevant because absent?

Maybe they just don't know how to ferret out merit.

[Way2go]

2. To get ahead, do NOT allow yourself to be thought of as a

Superstar. Those folks get fired because they are highly resented by their lazy/incompetent peers/superiors. Aim for being seen as barely above average AND as non-threatening to the established order - that thy days may be long where you toil to make others rich.

[Laelth]

3. Socialism for the rich. Capitalism for the rest of us. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[TheKentuckian]

4. Merit is largely irrelevant across the board

Remember that W fella? He failed his way to the top.

Competent people are forced to stay where they are because they can actually do the job or shit canned as a threat to the pecking order or to demand too much money.

[Greyhound]

5. I learned that lesson 5 minutes after I got my first job as an employee. n/t

[laughingliberal]

6. Responsibility and Merit, like taxes, are for the 'little people.' nt

[ProgressIn2008]

7. From my observations, merit is often irrelevant in any workplace.

Thinking of the workplaces I've been in or seen, the pattern is usually this: the really capable, hard workers will often rise to the top of the middle, with each doing the job of fifteen people. Or so it seems. But it's hard for them to advance to the higher levels on that merit/experience, since those spots are saved for those with a particular pedigree or those who have directed their energies to the fine art of hustling. I've always tried to get a boss who's one of those hard-working, meritorious middle types. When you work hard for them, they tend to appreciate it.

[unblock]

8. it is about "merit" but it's all in the DEFINITION of the term

they use the term "merit" or its equivalents because the vast majority of workers are measured and judged by at least somewhat objective standards.

board members, especially directors, are measured in very murky ways, such as the shares they own, the secrets they know (perhaps they are former top executives) or the connections they have.

many directorships are simply given as a bribe, effectively, to get someone to do a deal. sure i'll make you my exclusive supplier, just put my wife on the board.

these people "earn" their seat on the board by keeping potentially helpful contacts warm. if a company might need additional funding, it's helpful to have a board member who works for a venture capital fund.

that's what passes for "merit" in the corporate world. catch them in a quiet moment and few top executives will disagree that there's something impure, or downright corrupt, about it, but they'll all just shrug their shoulders and say that's just the way it is, got any better ideas?

[Goldstein1984]

9. In every corporation where I've worked

it's all about heredity and wardrobe.