Very insightful, Steve. Many employers use the "Twenty Eighty Rule" to justify cuts in order to squeeze another penny for the stockholders.  The employers do not realize that, while 20% of the employees do most the work the business cannot operate without the mediocre 80%.  Furthermore, if the 80% is not relatively happy they can easily drag down the business via customer perception, unfriendly service, uncaring service, inept service and shrink. 

Employees resent it when company principles appear to care more for the stockholders, many of whom certainly have no interest in the company except for one return on investment than for the welfare and standard of living for the employee.   Employees will ask,  why bust my buns for some person who inherited well and has never worked a day in his life or come in early to open up the business or stayed late to resolve a business challenge?  Employees resent it when some person is appointed to the board and given a huge salary by most employee standards,  who may have never worked and who has definitely every lost an ounce of sweat of second of time in the business.  So, sure, there may be one sales person whose performance is off the charts; however, it makes no difference if the product is not in stock, or it is damaged in the warehouse, or the order was lost, or the billing was not correct, etc.  The reality is that 4 mediocre employees can more than offset the performance of one exception employee. 
The challenge for corporate management is to please the stockholders, the vendors, the employees and the customers.  Competent management can usually address all of these. 

gojoe209

How are Craftsmen tools tarnished? This guy has probably never turned a wrench in his life ! I am  a licensed A/C Mechanic and always turn to Craftsmen for price and quality. SnapOn and Mac brands are too expensive. No to mention Craftsmen has put a lot of quality and innovative tools on the market in the last twenty years.

The world economy is changing and some of the biggest players are Russian Oligarchs!  To read more about this and the infighting that is going on over big money and the Olympics in 2014, please read my novel, available on BN.com and Amazon:

 

 

well the mexicans are taking over california,  and china owns american because of all the money we owe them, and the pooor man/women who works in america supports the system.

worked for radio shack in my early 20's....worst people EVER....rude,threate​ning,always negative...for what?...minimum wage ...when they switched their product line to cell phones i laughed knowing they'd soon be gone....i remember a day the "manager" fired all 6 of us ...the next day the district creep fired the manager...the 6 were all very good people and i'm happy to say 4 of us own our companies which will outlast swine shack

not for 5 sec's do i buy google going away''.the more things change. the more they stay the same''.and that's the reason why. Unless some one builds a better mouse trap to borrow your analogy,search will always be needed. it may be the reason.that tablets or laptops will be around. unless the entire world some how receive their PhD's.

While I agree that some of these companies may not be around in the near future, most have the same problem that he failed to point out.  All of these companies cut costs by firing their employees, closing stores, and selling off assets to pay the bills.  What do you do when all of these are gone ?  If you want to stay in business you need to make the customer happy..........botto​m line; and you are not going to do that with unhappy, untrained staff that are wondering if they are even going to have a job tomorrow.  I once read a business article concerning Costco.  The "experts" rated it a "B+"; saying that they would have given it an "A", but the owner pays his employees too much money.  His response was "they are the ones that got me here, why should I not reward them ?"  This is a problem MANY American-run businesses have.  When the "bean counters" are running the company and they try to save a penny here, and a penny there, (and it usually comes at the expense of the employee), customer service goes down and your days are numbered.  While greed may be good, it is also very short-sighted.  

This are my predictions!   Number one!  Because they keep Abusing there workers!  JC penney! not good!  Number two, Bank of America because they continue to rip people off there investments.  Number 3 Kmart because they are obviously in the most bottom of the line for good consumer attraction.