Peter F. Drucker Boxed Set (8 Books) (The Drucker Library)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Overpaid Executives

The Greed Effect

EGALITARIANISM HAS NEVER HAD great appeal in this country except to a handful of intellectuals. Now, however, a few high incomes of a very few top corporate executives are becoming a national issue.

Executive compensation played Banquo’s ghost in the 1984 labor negotiations. It is not, of course, a “bargainable issue”; had it been brought up by the union, management would surely have declared it to be irrelevant and impermissible. Yet executive compensation was clearly the biggest obstacle to management’s attempts to limit wage and salary increases for the rank and file and thereby to prevent ...