Is Management Getting Worse?
To some readers, the answer to the headline may seem obvious: Yes, American management is clearly worse than it was, say, thirty or fifty years ago, because short-termism is endemic among public companies, and short-termism leads to all sorts of bad outcomes, like underinvestment and accounting gaming.
But that analysis is simplistic. Short-termism simply shows that management has adopted good for them, bad for pretty much everyone else (save maybe their bankster allies) goals and are pursuing them aggressively.
A comment by John Kay of the Financial Times has the effect of raising much more fundamental questions about the caliber of top managers.
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