As mama to two unruly and willful little boys and possessor of a fairly good temper, I struggle with the advice from experts re: spanking. "They" say that spanking "slows mental development and hinders achievement." Naturally "they" are not saying such things while faced with a four-year-old who looks you right in the eyes and throws his Percy the tank engine toy at his baby brother's head. Anyway.
The experts are up in arms because of a statistically insignificant survey released claiming that most CEOs were spanked as children. In other news, most CEOs were raised in the 40s, 50s and 60s. File that one away in the "do you understand the relationship between cause and effect?" cabinet.
While I look hard to find the reason USA Today felt it necessary to release this bit of trivia as "news," I'm nonetheless interested in the whole topic. And I'm wondering: should we reinstate spanking for CEOs? No, not as a parenting tactic for future CEOs (my son breathes a sigh of relief), but as a measure to reign in some of the bad behavior of CEOs in the boardroom today.
If they're going to act like children, why not treat them as such? Maybe a good wooden spoon hanging over the conference table at Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) might have kept Patricia Dunn from listening to that feasibility study on whether planting spies at the Wall Street Journal was a good idea. Or could it have dissuaded Steve Jobs from accepting the plan to back-date stock options at Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)? Maybe if Sumner Redstone was afraid of a good strapping he'd reduce his salary at Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA) a bit more.
It's at least worth a try!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-11-2006 @ 1:32AM
Mr. noitall said...
The backdating scandal at Apple and other companies should reveal the true nature of these guys. The finacial media for the most part seems to want to downplay the issue, by saying "only" 80 to 100 companies were involved. But if you think of how many people within those companies knew about it that adds up to alot of dishonest people. Also during the time that most of the backdating was going on, the market was dropping. So while the public was losing money from their investments in these companies, the executives were using a dishonest scheme to enrich themselves at the stock holder's expence. They HAD to KNOW this was wrong, but they did it anyway. It has to make you wonder what else was done or what else is being done right now by these same people.