Reknown criminal psychologist Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, has proposed screening CEOs for signs of psychopathic behavior:
The rest of the article is worth a read, as it talks about how recent trends in corporate mergers, rapid turnovers, and speculation bubbles have created an environment for psychopaths, corroboration from other psychologists, and relevant anecdotes with Al Dunlap and Andrew Fastow.
Anyway, that’s the proposal. What does the SDMB hivemind think?
While the idea may have some merit, I doubt it will happen or that it would be effective if it did happen. Who will watch the watchers?
Screened by order of whom? If you mean by law, then no way. Teachers and police, etc are public employees (although I find it hard to believe that all teachers are screened psychologically-- need a cite for that). The shareholders can require CEOs to be screened if they so choose.
Yeah, I think that follows the principles of free-enterprise. I have recently started a couple different corporations, and thereby am an executive. If we begin to make a lot of money, then it will become an issue. In my main focus business, my official title is Chairman, and my partner is the President. Basically the business is simply the two of us, we’ve both known each other for years, and it would be quite insulting if one of us decided the other needed a psychiatric evaluation. So who is going to get us to take such an evaluation? We both hold the keys to the organization. If one day we should end up holding the keys to an organization with billions of dollars at it’s disposal, who is going to enforce that? If I were hiring someone to replace myself or my partner s/he would be evaluated very carefully, and a psychiatric evaluation as such would possibly be a part of that, just like when I filled out a psychiatric evaluation at Pizza Hut when I was 17. However at the end of the day we are the ones who control whether or not something like that is administered. In order for it to be enforced it would be a sort of nationalisation of enterprise that would have many repercussions.
I think it’s simply an unrealistic expectation. Right now we are entering an age where information is much easier to come by. If someone wanted to investigate me they could probably find lots of information about me. To be honest, of the things I’d be most embarassed for business associates to find, Straight Dope Flame wars are up near the top of that list, and that is free and public information for anyone to look up, if they know what they are looking for. So I think we simply must have faith in our ability to gather the information as time goes by. You can’t account for everything, and the lack of acceptance of that simple fact is the cause of a lot of people’s anxiety.
For me personally, I would never get into an Enron style situation on any level. No outside organization is going to have control over my retirement. I don’t even look toward an IRA, I am much more into the idea of a retirement based upon infrastructure and diversification than I am on the idea of some investment broker helping me hold some money in escrow for a few years. In my opinion the answer is to hold more power over your own life than it is to try and enforce some difficult to enforce method of accountability.
Erek
:dubious: Not being part of the SDMB ‘hivemind’ I can’t answer for them. For myself it sounds like a load to me. Corporations are run by private individuals. Their boards of directors/shareholders decide who they want to be the CEO’s…not the government.
“We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?”
Answer: Because they are PRIVATE corporations you moron…unlike PUBLIC employee’s you listed. See the difference? Unfortunately (for you) the revolution hasn’t happened yet so you can’t just take control and dictate to private corporations how they should and should not choose who runs their companies. For a “Reknown criminal psychologist” you seem to be fairly clueless…
-XT
How would that affect the candidate pool for the job?
Most likely because a “criminal” CEO could cause financial harm while a “criminal” police officer or teacher most likely could cause bodily harm…a far more serious crime in itself.
And with stock turnover on a near daily basis, shareholders requiring background checks sound awfully awkward to me, if you are talking about common stock shareholders.
I think that while it could be useful as an internal policy for many companies (I’ve certainly dealt with my share of abusive bosses at all levels, not just CEO) I don’t see it as something that practically could be mandated, and, as the article states, corporate boards often select CEOs in part precisely for their lack of conscience. I think what we’ve got here is something that’s deeply entrenched and inherent in the system, and not isolated to the minds of specific CEOs.
If what one is trying to do is reduce corporate criminality, well, you can’t really prosecute the crime before it’s been committed, eh? Mandated psychological profiling to screen CEOs for supposedly psychopathic behavior strikes me as uncomfortably similar to the “precrime” laws of the film Minority Report. I recognize that such screening may already be mandated for law enforcement or teaching jobs, but I have to wonder whether it’s actually effective, or more in the line of legal ass-covering.
There are already laws on the books against corporate malfeasance; to those I would add only (in not already in place) clear and enforced corporate policies (not necessarily laws) against abusive bullying by supervisors in the workplace.
Now, on to this:
Dude, I don’t consider myself part of any particular ‘hive mind’, and I’ll thank you not to use that term in the future.
Methinks the lady dost protest too much.
Erek
Living in Corporate Headquarters, Hive Central
Do we really do psychological screening of teachers? I have never heard of such and am friends with teachers in San Diego.
I don’t know. That would depend on what was screened for. My guess is someone who is going to “rape and pillage” at the corporate level could probably fake a psych exam if he wanted to.
Can we get a cite about teachers being screened by psych exams, as your OP claimed? I’ll let the part about cops pass, because it wouldn’t surprise me if they were screened in some way-- hey get to carry guns around in public all the time, aferall.
You thinks wrong, then.
First of all, teachers are NOT screened psychologically in any way; my mom is an elementary teacher and since I’ve thought about getting high school certification I’ve asked her all about the process, and she never mentioned that. Then again she got certified in the seventies. But I also have a cousin who is a teacher in high school and when I asked her about the process (since it might be different from elementary) she never said anything about it either, and she got certified in the '00s. So I am fairly sure teachers are not screened. Cops are, though.
I think it’s a good idea in theory (it would have to be impelled by the stockholders, though, not the government, since corporations are private), but in practice sociopaths are very good at faking tests like this. There is no test that a cunning and intelligent (which most CEOs would be) sociopath couldn’t pass, because they are very good at lying. I guess the only thing that might work is to give them a pulse rate test and make them watch or read emotionally wrenching video or stories, sort of like a Voigt-Kampff test. But again, this would have to be at the stockholders’ request.
From another thread, a possibly relevant anecdote… :rolleyes:
I had a friend who worked at a mall, and he was the only one who could ever get days off, be trusted to do some special task, etc. Why? Because his department was the only one that never had missing merchandise. He was the only employee that absolutely wasn’t stealing from the store.
People steal stuff. Honestly employed people steal stuff. That has nothing to do with being a sociopath–it’s just a stupid human thing.
Does it matter that the Enron guys were in a position to steal more? Not really. The reason they were able to get away with it for so long is that the percentage they were skimming was so slight and so spread out that no one noticed for years. And Enron is one case out of tens or hundreds of thousands of corporations running in the US–yet the only large case of embezzlement to come to mind, is Enron.
Outside of old, large corporations, CEOs are just as often not hired. They just start a company, and it either grows or dies. To get it to go public, they will have a board of investors who watches over them. If they were loopy–probably someone would notice and not give them the funding to go on. Then after that, they have the board of directors, who again, watch the person, and if they think he’s loopy, they can kick him out.
Steve Jobs, before he got realistic, was kicked out of his own company and not hired back until he had started and succesfully run another company. If Jobs got kicked, I would doubt the length that anyone insane would last.
What are we testing for? Sociopaths? Great, so the CEO is cold and manipulative. Well darn, wouldn’t want that in a CEO…
Certainly a sociopath would not be my favorite person–but if he’s on my side and ke kicks ass as a CEO… shrug If he pays my salary I’m good. If he mistreats me and my fellow employees, I quit. If he’s embezzling, he goes to jail, the government pays back everyone who lost money, and someone else is brought in.
I just see no point. Yeah, a bad person can and will do bad things–but why do we care if, in particular, a CEO is a bad person? I’m infinitely more likely to be shot and killed by a black male from a low income family than by the CEO of my company. Why don’t we test all young black men before they can get a job? Because it’s discriminatory.
Simply, this is a stupid and discriminatory proposal. If you don’t like rich CEOs, well fine. But testing them for psychological issues? Screw you.
I don’t think it’s an original observation that a lot of CEOs are assholes. Stockholders tend to like it that way, because the more of an asshole you are, the less of a conscience you have, and if your conscience isn’t getting in the way all the time, you can make a lot of money. Stockholders or their proxies who really want to make money will hire someone who is a psychopath but not quite so far gone as to rip off his own company or get it in trouble with the law.
SDMB HIve Mind Unit 1478B says, “To read from the replies, it is obvious that not only are the inmates are running the asylum, they have their prospective victims convinced that this is a good thing. Remember “Chainsaw Al Dunlap.” BZZZZZZZZTTTTT! The idea, although sound, does not stand a chance. Too much resistance from the bizzzzzzzznezzz hive mind.”
You folks need to be much clearer indicating that you are condemning the subject of the OP rather than the author of it.
Well, you might consider that the OP was only addressing those members of the SDMB who are part of the hivemind rather than taking umbrage at a clumsy attempt at humor.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
An awful lot of General Electric shareholders would be upset at the thought of preventing psychotics from running corporations (although a lot of former GE employees and vendors might favor it).
I put the quote from the OP in before that statement Tom. To me its pretty clear I’m not talking about rjung but the author of the quote…afaik he (rjung) isn’t Robert Hare (or a Reknown criminal psychologist for that matter) in disguise.
However, if there was any confusion I apologize. I was calling Robert Hare a moron…not rjung.
-XT