Do All Companies Have to be Evil? Enron, Google and the evolutionary psychology of corporate environments, By Michael Shermer, Scientific American Mind February 2008
If you are at all interested in workplace psychology, read this article, it is great.
I’ve tried to articulate what goes wrong in corporations, but Mr. Shermer puts it all together, and it’s a great read.
When I first started working at a large company many years ago, there was one woman who was the “kiss up- kick down” type. Everyone knew it, and I was, one day, one of her targets . Another person came into my office and commiserated, and said, “She’ll probably get a promotion, too.”
Well, guess what? She wasn’t promoted. She was almost fired, she couldn’t bully her way to a promotion, so she resigned. She went to work for a much smaller company, with a higher officer title, in a highly visible position. And guess what happened? That company totally crashed and burned. Just in the past few months the CEO resigned. (I have mixed emotions about this — on the one hand, of course, there’s schadenfreude. On the other, there’s all the people who were put out of work due to this management).
And I’ve been around long enough to see this happening quite a bit. People can get rewarded based on their Machiavellian talents, but in general, the organization sinks.
Why? Because decisions are based on self-interest, rather than good of the group.
And this was the downfall of Enron. I didn’t realize it, but Enron’s president from 1997 to its collapse in 2001, Mr. Skilling, was a believer in “Selfish Gene” theory — which he misread to be “everyone out for himself.” He assumed people were motivated by fear and greed, and so instilled both in the Enron culture — by continually having people get arbitrary performance reviews where they’d get fired, and by paying the remainder vast sums.
The end result was decision making on the basis of “fear of my own personal failure” rather than “success of the organization”.
The author, Mr. Shermer (who I haven’t yet Googled) then discusses Google. 
The culture of meritocracy, transparency, and metrics rules, and we can all see the results so far. The mantra “Don’t be Evil” seems to be aspirational for real, not like for show.
The trouble I have with Google is that the majority of corporate control is in the hands of a few individuals. The stock is in two classes, “A” and “B”. The “A” shares, carry 1 vote per share, and are the ones sold on the open market. The “B” shares carry 10 votes per share and are largely held by Drs. Brin, Page and the major private investors and officers. They are the majority shareholdlers, or at lease exercise corporate control over minority shareholder rights, I’m not sure.
Every time a small group of men goes in a room and closes the door and makes rules, it is not good. Here we have sudden wealth, and the trappings of celebrity. I can only hope they are mentally healthy individuals.
[...] Free exchange | Economist.com wrote an interesting post today on Neuro review: Do All Companies Have to be Evil?: Scientific AmericanHere’s a quick excerptEnron, Google and the evolutionary psychology of corporate environments, By Michael Shermer, Scientific American Mind February 2008 If you are… [...]