ethics
Goals under attack!
Friday, January 15th, 2010 | Compensation Plans, Goal setting | No Comments
Heard an interesting piece on NPR this evening (transcript here). One of the participants, Lisa Ordonez, a management professor at the University of Arizona was citing some examples of what she calls “Goals Gone Wild.” Here is what Ordonez had to say about a corporate goal of GM’s to achieve 29 percent market share:
And this led to, for them, a focus away from profitability. And to achieve this goal myopically. Now I’m not going to say that that goal was the entire downfall of GM, but obviously strict adherence to goals can cause these kinds of problems.
Also in the piece Ordonez describes how parental incentives to their school aged children to achieve all A’s have lead to “unethical behavior like cheating on an exam or having someone write a paper for you.” Something to think about I suppose. What bothered me about the story was the sentiment that goals are bad by nature. I didn’t catch the title of the story until I went looking for the transcript –”It’s not always good to create goals.” Yes, the title seems to support that sentiment.
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