Salesforce CEO Slams 'The World's Dumbest Idea': Maximizing Shareholder Value
Jack Welch has called it “the dumbest idea in the world.”
Vinci Group Chairman and CEO Xavier Huillard has called it “totally idiotic.”
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has said that “customers are number one; employees are number two and shareholders are number three.”
Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever [UN], has denounced “the cult of shareholder value.”
John Mackey at Whole Foods [WFM] has condemned businesses that “view their purpose as profit maximization and treat all participants in the system as means to that end.”
This week, Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce [CRM] joined these CEOs and declared in an article in the Huffington Post that this still-pervasive business theory is “wrong. The business of business isn’t just about creating profits for shareholders — it’s also about improving the state of the world and driving stakeholder value.”
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/02/05/salesforce-ceo-slams-the-worlds-dumbest-idea-maximizing-shareholder-value/
I didn't realize this particular heresy was so popular! 
= new reply since forum marked as read
how do they act and how do they treat their employees and customers? 
You make me smile on a very unsmiley day.
Thank you.
He was chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4,000%.[2] In 2006, Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million.[1] When he retired from GE he took a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in history.[3]
cold alien eyes
Welch popularized so-called "rank and yank" policies used now by other corporate entities. Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers, regardless of absolute performance.[14]...During the early 1980s he was dubbed "Neutron Jack" (in reference to the neutron bomb) for eliminating employees while leaving buildings intact.[16] In Jack: Straight From The Gut, Welch states that GE had 411,000 employees at the end of 1980, and 299,000 at the end of 1985. Of the 112,000 who left the payroll, 37,000 were in businesses that GE sold, and 81,000 were reduced in continuing businesses.... Welch reduced basic research, and closed or sold off businesses that were under-performing.
According to BusinessWeek, critics of Welch have questioned whether the pressure he places on employees may have led them to "cut corners", which may have contributed to controversies over defense-contracting, or the Kidder, Peabody & Co. bond-trading scheme in the early 1990s.[8]
Welch has received criticism for a lack of compassion for the middle class and working class. By his actions during acquisitions and wholesale shutdowns of GE business units Welch proved that keeping only the "good" units of your company can maximize ROI in the short term.[21] Welch has stated that he is not concerned with the discrepancy between the salaries of top-paid CEOs and those of average workers. When asked about the issue of excessive CEO pay, Welch has said that such allegations are "outrageous" and has vehemently opposed proposed SEC regulations affecting executive compensation. Countering the public uproar over excessive executive pay (including backdating stock options, golden parachutes for nonperformance, and extravagant retirement packages), Welch stated that CEO compensation should continue to be dictated by the free market, without interference from government or other outside parties.[22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
And welcome to DU!
Almost more like a cult, and at least in my realm it's like talking to a brick wall.
Then again, my employer is rather dysfunctional itself, so maybe it's us 
is stunning:
These criticisms of the single-minded pursuit of shareholder value as measured by the current stock price are well-founded. The theory has contributed to:
pervasive short-termism;
diverted human and financial resources from needed investments in innovation;
dispirited both employees and managers, leading to pervasive disengagement;
generated “bad profits” that undermined customer loyalty;
caused excessive “financialization” of the economy, making it vulnerable financial crashes;
incentivized CEOs to become financial engineers and companies to lose their entrepreneurial mojo;
led firms to pursue the extraction of value, rather than the creation of value;
undermined the economic recovery from the Global Financial Crisis;
drastically reduced rates of return on assets and on invested capital;
appropriated gains that flowed from workers’ improvements in productivity; and
led to secular economic stagnation and increasingly unsustainable economic inequality.
And this is from freaking Forbes. 
First you extract as much as possible from the consumer.
Then you can slash wages as much as possible.
Take all the profits and pay shareholders.
You can tell Jack Ma is serious because all the people who work for his corporation are rich. 
a good school ... more prestigious than the one I attended. 
