Headcount Paranoia

Greedy, inflexible, streamlined and dictatorial: how corporate Stone Age thinking destroyed the business landscape and gratuitously consumed valuable resources - and what needs to be changed as a matter of urgency. A scathing insider analysis.

The economic crisis is only the tip of the iceberg. For far too long, exchange-listed corporations have only ever focused on the short-term horizon with regard to that most holy of holies: the quarterly results. Whatever the reasons behind a sales crisis, the managers responsible could always save their hides as long as they came up with grand plans for cutting costs. Employees were unmasked as being a particularly insidious expense factor and therefore the major profit obstacle. With astonishing consistency, corporate bosses relentlessly manoeuvred their businesses - and, as result, the economy and society as a whole - short-sightedly, self-servingly and inescapably into a dead end.