Because it sure seems like it.
Short answer: Yes, I"m pretty sure. But you have to be smart about it. Take credit for the work of those below you, brown nose to the higher ups and abuse those below you.
Yes, they are.
That was easy!
Compared with what? If you’re comparing it with academia, then hell yes. “Success” in the corporate world is driven by organizational goals - did the company make enough money, did the corporation win the lawsuit, did the corporation get ISO certified, did the corporation deliver the product on time, etc. Success in academia is much more personalized - did the student/professor/whatever demonstrate adequate achievement? Did the student demonstrate mastery of the material?
If a student plagiarizes a paper in Important Stuff 305, that’s a problem because the point of the exercise was not to produce a paper per se, but to demonstrate mastery of the course material and the writing process. If a corporate writer “plagiarizes” a press release out of old press releases from the company with some wording borrowed from the 2010 TRE Phase 2 System Proposal (revision 5), nobody cares because the goal of producing a press release was accomplished.
Narcissists are more successful in the corporate world.
It’s also about being ruthless and mercenary, in addition to being narcissistic, I think.
IMost corporate reward structures and corporate mission statements/goals are at odds with each other because they push and try to glorify being a team player and sacrificing for the company, and yet reward the biggest peacocks who manage not to suck abysmally. As a result, I’d say that it’s not that cheaters win, but rather that like Crafter Man says, narcissists and other self-absorbed types do better.
I don’t doubt that some of them blatantly plagiarize and cheat, but even if they don’t, a semi-competent person with that personality type will do better over time than a supremely confident person who quietly takes the team mentality and sacrificing for the company message to heart, regardless of competence.
It takes extraordinary management to recognize the un-showy, self-sacrificing types and to ignore the “LOOK AT ME!” types, and unfortunately, once those types get promoted, they tend not to be extraordinary, and promote people just like themselves.
As my father always said, “Son, NEVER cheat. It’s too much trouble if it’s small, and if it’s big enough to be worth it, you’re sure to get caught.”
I don’t know. Depends how you define cheaters. In my corporate world, there are always some people that cheat on their expenses. you know, add a couple of bucks here, a starbucks there, a meal they didn’t eat, etc.
My experience is that the above “cheaters” cheat on pretty much everything. Take credit for others work, do stuff 90%, lie about small things, probably cheat on their spouses, etc. Eventually, it catches up with them. I think of them as losers, and I keep far far away if possible because they always get caught “cheating” at something sooner or later.
No, because almost all cheaters and rule breakers get caught eventually. They may be successful in the short run, but for the long term, the most successful people are those with integrity.
Not if they get to be the boss, the person responsible for enforcing the rules, first.
I think it depends on the industry, and how much oversight that particular industry has. I work in home health care, and there’s a LOT of shady behavior that goes on in some companies. Bribery, theft of clients, outright Medicare fraud, as well as a more subtle gaming of the system. But there’s also a lot of oversight, from Medicare, from the state, and even from the feds.
While it’s unmistakably true that in the short term, the shadiest companies and most dishonest people in those companies get the most clients and the most money, it’s also apparent that eventually, they get taken down. The past few years, we’ve seen a lot of companies in our industry raided by the FBI for suspicion of fraud and/or malfeasance. Companies get shut down, money gets taken back by Medicare, and people go to jail. Even when the FBI doesn’t find anything actionable, just their raid will often destroy a company’s reputation, and other agencies will refuse to work with them anymore, which means they go bankrupt anyhow. (This just happened with one of my favorite mobile doctor companies in my city - they were raided, they were *not *found in violation of anything, but word got around and now everyone is afraid to have their signature on their patient files for fear we’ll get raided, too. Since the investigation took over a month, during which they couldn’t see patients, many of their patients switched to a different company without any encouragement at all, and with a quiet sigh of relief from my boss; he wouldn’t go quite so far as to tell our clients to switch doctors ('cause that’s unethical) but he was greatly relieved when they did.)
The only question is how long it will take before the cards fall. If you’re “lucky”, you could engage in shady tactics just long enough to make wheelbarrows full of cash, stash it all offshore somewhere, and then quietly dissolve your company before you’re caught. But the same greed that leads people to take the “easy” dishonest path often means that they can’t get out while the getting is good.
I’m curious about how many of the posters here actually work in corporate America in significant management positions. Or even insignificant ones. “Cheating and rule breaking” is generally frowned upon. Who wants to do business with a cheater? Sure, you can get away with some minor expense padding or fudging your time sheet a bit. You don’t find too many people who cheat their way to senior management.
Even then. Bosses are accountable to shareholders and the “rule of law” in society. A company that violates laws and regulations will be caught eventually. A company that violates human resource laws, securities laws, etc. will be caught eventually.
Depends on which rules we’re talking about, doesn’t it? The manager who pads his division’s profits by breaking an OSHA rule that is never successfully enforced will certainly benefit over the manager who scrupulously honors the rule.
The notion that people who break legal rules are caught eventually is mostly wrong, IMO. For example, in the wake of the 2007 crash there were a ton of shareholder derivative suits. A lot of them involved genuine if minor securities fraud but never would have been filed in the absence of a massive crash that made them worthwhile to file. For the many companies not waylaid by the crash, and for those decision-makers whose prime years were, say, 2001-2006, a little cheating here and there almost certainly paid off. The community bank’s shareholders would never know that it falsely reported its loan ratios because it got out of its real estate holdings before the whole thing collapses, etc. etc.
At some point a big enough company has too much genuine scrutiny to pull of that this kind of shit. But that’s a small percentage of the overall number of companies in the “corporate world.”
I don’t think they cheat or break rules but rather bend rules, find short cuts and loopholes, and then expolit the hell out of them. And if a rule or policy gets in their way they go about the legal means of changing the rule.
They’re even more dangerous when they group together and write the rules for themselves. How ridiculous is it to be making more money than anyone else in the company but somehow find a way for the company to pay for your lunch everyday or buy you a car to get to work in?
Not to mention the whole golden parachute thing. “Hey, if you suck at your job and lose the company money, we’ll still send you away with a big pile of money. All you have to do is sign this paper so the rest of us executives get the same deal. Eveyone’s a winner!”
It depends a lot on the corporate culture and the rules being broken and the position you are in. As well as if you are breaking policy or laws or “just” ethical and moral behavior (like taking credit for someone else’s work) or if you are merely bending them.
But ethical people tend to end up in ethical companies with ethical cultures. And people who are a little skeevy tend to thrive in skeevy environments. I suspect more companies are in the rewarding of those who “play in the grey” - i.e. they aren’t assholes or criminals, but they aren’t necessarily nice people who aren’t looking for ways to work the system to their (and the company’s) favor.
That’s essentially what I was trying to say, but put more succinctly.
Would you consider a company that takes advantages of existing loopholes in tax laws to reduce their company’s effective tax rate as a way of working the system? Or do you define “working the system” as violating laws and regulations when it benefits their company?
If the tax loophole is there, its stupid not to take it. Everyone else will, and you’ll put yourself at a competitive disadvantage if you are operating at a higher tax burden than your competitors - you won’t have as much money to invest or to retain for future dividend payments.
If you violate laws and regulations, you are a criminal and we should put more people in jail.
I started my career in tax, and my last job was software audit - pay every single penny you owe, don’t pay any more pennies than you have to - if you have to err, pay a little more. Mantra of both professions.