Re:The curious case of the abominable shower
by pjc50 on Thursday November 23, 2023 @05:40AM
(#38391386)
The only way to avoid this is to somehow let the employees share in any efficiency savings. But that comes with problems of its own, and is anyway incredibly ideologically unpopular.
It's a principal-agent problem. Imagine there is $100,000 in front of you. You are absolutely forbidden from taking any of it. However, if you set it on fire, and write a short memo inventing a plausible justification for doing this, your working life will be easier over the next year. A lot of people would do that with only very minor guilt.
From the employer perspective: there's no magic way to find out whether spending is "good" or not. You can add process and reviewers to check. But that also costs money, and slows down all the actual work. That's how you end up spending $1000 of staff time to have a meeting to approve purchasing a pen.
It's a principal-agent problem. Imagine there is $100,000 in front of you. You are absolutely forbidden from taking any of it. However, if you set it on fire, and write a short memo inventing a plausible justification for doing this, your working life will be easier over the next year. A lot of people would do that with only very minor guilt.
From the employer perspective: there's no magic way to find out whether spending is "good" or not. You can add process and reviewers to check. But that also costs money, and slows down all the actual work. That's how you end up spending $1000 of staff time to have a meeting to approve purchasing a pen.