As CEOs make more money, they treat employees worse: study

[roxiejules]

Want to get an idea of how nice a CEO will be? You might want to sneak a peek at his paycheck.


The more a CEO gets paid, the more likely it is he'll treat his employees harshly, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by professors at Rice University, Harvard University and the University of Utah, found that "increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy."

The authors believe that this increase in meanness is due to an increase in power: As executives get paid more, they get a heightened sense of power, and "more power leads managers to mistreat subordinates more and evaluate them more unfavorably," the findings suggest.

This meanness gets worse as the gap between CEO compensation and the pay of lower-level employees widens, according to the study, called "When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations."

"Higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers results in executives perceiving themselves as being all-powerful, and this perception of power leads them to maltreat rank-and-file workers." the study found.

Should executives be paid less to try to create a kinder work environment? The study concludes the issue should be weighed.

"We have argued that in addition to examining the links between executive pay and a firm’s financial success, it is important to consider a thus far unreported ethical implication of high executive compensation — that executives with higher income treat employees more meanly," the study concludes.


- New York Daily News via Michael Mooore

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/ceos-make-more-money-they-treat-employees-worse-study

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. I would love to see a study on Exec Pay vs Company Performance

especially if it tracks turnover costs.

[jgraz]

5. Didn't you get the memo? Exec pay *is* company performance

Nothing else matters any more. Shareholders, customers, workers and the community can go pound sand.

[D-Lee]

10. It increases emphasis on short-term performance nt

[Curmudgeoness]

2. Sounds like the study where they had "prisoners" and "guards"

and the power over another human being made ordinary people turn into sadists. Why am I not surprised by this?

[rpannier]

3. It's certainly true of the Jack-ass Donald Trump

Although I hear the guy that owns the Mavericks is great to work for

[roxiejules]

4. The more power they have the more corrupt the behavior becomes, too.

"Dispossessing subordinates of human qualities and thinking of them as inferior beings makes CEO's treat them as merely a business expense and deny decent working conditions, health benefits, lunch breaks, etc. They are also less likely to take into consideration the needs and aspirations of those lower down the ladder UNLESS it somehows benefits their own goals."

Just another reason why taxes should be raised on the very wealthy....to curb power.

[KT2000]

6. just read where a CEO of a

conglomerate that buys up American manufacturing companies, fires the workers and sends to work to China made $ 46 million last year.
Guess he is not going to be too worried about how the workers are treated.

[jgraz]

7. This will keep happening as long as the class war is fought by only one side.

[roxiejules]

8. People who plot, scheme, climb and claw

"The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing." - John Berger

[Moostache]

9. Why do I feel like Claude Rains?

I'm shocked, SHOCKED that CEOs become self-aggrandizing pricks in correlation to the size of their raping the companies that work at (not FOR)...

[Blue_Tires]

11. ttt

[Uncle Joe]

12. I would bet it's also related to lower self-esteem for the CEO; as their pay far outstrips their

average workers, going from aproximately 29 times in 1989 to over 300 times today.

This loss of CEO self-esteem is fed by subconscious guilt; the only way for some if not most CEOs to reconcile this guilt, so long as vastly disproportionate pay structures stay in place, is by dehumanizing their employees, which of course results in harsh treatment.

I believe this is the same psychological dynamic; although not to the extreme of a master/slave relationship.

"The authors believe that this increase in meanness is due to an increase in power: As executives get paid more, they get a heightened sense of power, and "more power leads managers to mistreat subordinates more and evaluate them more unfavorably," the findings suggest."

Thanks for the thread, roxiejules.

[Shireling]

13. It just shows that money does not make a person happy.

Having all that money does not satisfy a person. So then they try "power", and in their bitterness they become sadistic. Miserable, miserable people they are. But wanting (NEEDING) us to envy them.



:crazy:

[Populist_Prole]

14. Bingo!

Sore winners is what they are. Will squander whatever opportunity they have to live comfortably for what's left of their lives to being bitter THEY are not idolized as making it to the top. Seems to be the feeling of too many wealthy ( and healthy ) retirees that I know of. The seething bitterness they have is irrational and alarming.

[txlibdem]

15. 300 million of us -vs- 1 million of them

Time to vote the crooks and liars out of office. Time to force the gov to bring back Democracy and fair wages.