Better Work - The path to good jobs is through employers

One was the near-revolutionary response to the calamity of the Great Depression in the 1930s, premised on the view that markets sometimes fail and it is the role of government to set things right. [...] It is not a great leap from these assumptions to the view that the performance of a company is best judged in terms of the value of its shares, and that the primary obligation of managers is to increase the value of their company’s shares. [...] The conclusions of the commission appointed by the United States government to examine the causes of the crisis are unequivocal: the financial crisis was not a mere accident, it was the result of reckless behaviour undertaken by financial institutions and lax regulatory oversight by the appointed financial watchdogs. [...] The notion that the market would self-correct such misbehaviour was entirely misplaced.41 Failures were the direct result of the deregulation mentality that overtook the policy environment in the period preceding the collapse.42 And deregulation was a direct result of the broader adaption of policies and economic theories that have proven to be fundamentally wrong. [...] The expectation was that skills would be acquired in the workplace, both for the career progression of the employee and to meet the workforce needs of the employer.