capitalism isnt really about productivity, any more than Communism was about social welare. In both cases they are about preserving the power of class dictatorships - so sorting out members of this class, and their upper servants, is important.
Why Do Corporations/Institutions "Carry" So Many Unproductive Managers etc For So Long???
Well I suppose ultimately the individual company that does this carries the cost and fails. It also accounts for how these sorts survive much longer in the public sector (and might explain why some countries have much bigger public sectors to soak up all these idiots and prevent them damaging important parts of the economy 
)
I think a lot of the fabled "decline of British industry" is about incompetent management rather than union strength or lazy/bolshie workers (though these may have had some role). British industry was failing long before China came on the scene,
regards,
Martin
Hi
That's right. Some parts of the country are totally reliant on public sector incomes to keep going. That's why Cameron is going to have to tread really carefully next election. I still think they'll offer lump sums for public sector pensions, a-la right-to-buy.
Love
LR
I can't remember his/her name, but there was an economist who wrote a book called "The Firm", in which he looked at the hierarchical structures of most firms.
Having started from an assumption that management forms were chosen on teh grounds that those forms were the best to maximize productivity, and hence profit, the book instead concluded that these hierarchies existed for purposes of control - that management structures functioned so as to maintain the control over profits of the owners of the firm, even at the cost of lowering those profits.
Adam Smith wrote:
The directors of [joint stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. It is upon this account that joint stock companies for foreign trade have seldom been able to maintain the competition against private adventurers. They have, accordingly, very seldom succeeded without an exclusive privilege, and frequently have not succeeded with one. Without an exclusive privilege they have commonly mismanaged the trade. With an exclusive privilege they have both mismanaged and confined it.
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won/won-b5-c1-article-1-ss3.html
Given that capitalism is all about the productivity I must admit I reel with shock at the amount of truly damaging, abusive unproductive and troublesome managers etc that corporations refuse to deal with and shunt from place to place. As do the Catholic church who move around their peado priests (They would surely burn in hell for that if there was one!!!
)instead of dealing with them. Martin h made a great point once at how employment legislation is needed to prevent capitalism from "shooting itself in the foot" by allowing personal prejudices to detract from meeting productivity targets...So why are so many psycho amd incompetent peeps roaming our institutional corridors?? I feel it is because corps, institutions etc so fear exposure and for a crack to be seen to be apparent in their edifice that they do anything and I mean anything - cover up, lie, fabricate etc to preserve the illusion of normality. And I guess they "get away with it" cos of the secrecy and the power of eg the Catholic church who have been referred to as "like Mafia" in how they respond to any complaints...
Or do we need two sep. threads - one for priests, one for corps...Are these issues markedly different.. what do you think peeps??
Love
LW X