Corporate Failure by Design: Why Organizations Are Built to Fail
Corporate Failure by Design: Why Organizations Are Built to Fail
Synopsis
Excerpt
Truth is stranger than fiction, but not so popular.
--Anonymous
An information technologist at a law firm develops a software program for quickly, thoroughly, and accurately completing routine forms. His supervisor orders him to destroy the program because she had not authorized it. Instead, the technologist sells the program to a rival company, resigns shortly thereafter, and starts a lucrative consulting practice.
Officers of a manufacturer of computer hardware, desperately needing an operating system, schedule a meeting with the ceo of a small software company in order to discuss an arrangement through which the latter might develop one. They arrive at the CEO's home for the meeting, only to be kept waiting all day while he and his wife dither over the correct procedure for such an arrangement. Eventually, they leave without ever having had the meeting in the first place. the hardware manufacturer then approaches another software company that quickly agrees to develop the operating system, and enjoys tremendous success in doing so.
The vice president of Human Resources for a huge telecommunications corporation pleads guilty to charges of insider trading, for which he is fined almost a million dollars. He had previously pleaded guilty to a scheme in which he received kickbacks from profits earned by sixteen of his friends, from insider information he had provided. This is the individual responsible for developing and administering companywide ethical development pro-