Actors ... Decision Makers are People
Almost everything that happens in an economy starts off with a decision that has been made by a person. This is not always obvious, in fact, the role of the key decision making person is often cloaked in secrecy for reasons that are not always the best.
In companies, the decision makers are people. Though it may appear that the company is doing major activities and having good and/or bad impact, it is people who are making the decisions.
In countries, there is something of the same dynamic. People are always the source of all decisions.
Actors must be Accountable
Accountability is a serious weakness which must be addressed in any system of management metrics. To a great extent people have NOT been held accountable for very much. Mainly it is a company that gets some blame, maybe ... but the people who were responsible for the decisions are rarely held to account.
There was a time in US anti-trust law when company executives were held to account for anti-trust behavior by the company. Senior executives were incarcerated when they were involved with meetings to fix prices, for example, something not permitted under the statute. I got to know about this first hand when I worked with a number of senior managers who had previously worked in an industry that had been involved with anti-trust litigation. They were fearful of the law and did not want to be at risk. This was almost 50 years ago, and this concern no longer seems to apply.
Accountability Requires Management Information
Conventional financial accounting and corporate reporting requirements do rather little to enable effective accountability.
Corporate accountability has little meaning, especially for very large profitable companies. Any fines imposed as a result of litigation are almost always very small relative to the benefits derived from whatever the company has done. Conventional litigation is not the answer. Soemthing else is needed.
One of the possibilities is for the activities of companies to become the subject of better reporting, not so much by requiring more reporting from the company but by enabling others to report on what they know and see of company behavior.
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