In article , says...
David A. Scott wrote:

Are they kidding. Isn't this like before. Management never
accepts real responsiblitiy. That just flap there jaws and
go on. There will like last time be no real lasting changes.
By not pointing the finger at the managers at the top involved
they failed to correct the problem.

Management's response here is not the ultimate cause of the
accidents. The cause is a fundamentally flawed policy. Ask
a bureaucracy to do something impossible and that bureaucracy
will exhibit all sorts of pathological behaviors.

I completely agree, Paul. NASA has been tasked with operating a manned
space program on insufficient funds with unclear goals and make it
achieve spectacular, though undefined, results.

It's not just a NASA problem, though. I've been involved with enough
corporations to know that most managers, in response to P&L
responsibilities, try very hard to put their own people into a similar
impossible situation. It's what I call the "Get me a gold-plated Rolex,
RIGHT NOW, and if it costs me more than twenty bucks, you're fired!"
syndrome.

What do you think was the energizing factor in the recent corporate
accounting scandals? None other but this same pressure to achieve
impossible results from managers who have no understanding of the
realities of their situations, just of the P&L pressures that threaten
their own comfortably-appointed asses.

As long as this entire civilization is operated on bottom-line profit
pressure, this will continue to force most of the pathological
insititutional behaviors that we've seen over the past 100 years.

However, the fact is that the profit-driven capitalist economic system is
also responsible for the incredible wealth of Western civilization and
the almost godlike standard of living of average Americans and Europeans,
so it's not an option to simply toss it in the trashbin. What's needed
is a sane way to deal with the impossible demands it places on people in
the nooks and crannies.

--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for | Doug Van Dorn
thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup |