While cost-cutting in itself can be absolutely necessary and worthwhile, HOW it is done is very often wasteful and ends up generating higher costs than the intended benefits can ever bring. We speak today of six specific cost-cutting traps. 1) Undiscerning hiring freezes It seems logical: if we think we have too much staff, we…
As if the still growing diesel scandal hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated the strong need for whistleblower encouragement and protection in Germany, the recent case of the sausage maker Wilke drives the point home. Wilke has been found to be the source of the deaths of three people and sickening many more. And recently, photos taken by…
California’s new labor regulation law has implications far wider than its stated goals (to give gig economy workers more stability and economic security). On the downside, if left unchanged, it will most likely hasten the death of some traditional industries that we appreciate and/or which still play an important role in society (such as local…
Howard Schmidt (name changed to protect privacy), a software engineer in a leading machine-building company in Europe, realized that something was terribly wrong. The computers he and his colleagues used to write the software and firmware on which the company machines relied were suddenly closing down, and there seemed to be no way to restart…
On August 19, the Business Roundtable issued a new definition of the purpose of a corporation, signed by 181 CEOs of leading American corporations. This new definition widens the responsibility of a corporation from simply focusing on creating shareholder value, to include delivering value to customers, investing in employees, dealing fairly and ethically with suppliers…