Good governance went out of the window when a reductive view of human nature took hold

Simon Caulkin [website, @nikluac]  in The Guardian:

So why do so many boards and managers, supported by politicians, systematically do the opposite – run companies as top-down dictatorships, pursue growth by merger, destroy teamwork with runaway incentives, attack employment rights and conditions, outsource customer service, treat their stakeholders as resources to be exploited, and refuse wider responsibilities to society?

The answer is that management in the 1980s was subject to an ideological hijack by Chicago economics that put at the heart of governance a reductive "economic man" view of human nature needing to be bribed or whipped to do their exclusive job of maximising shareholder returns. Embedded in the codes, these assumptions now have the status of unchallenged truths.