What sort of self image – and self-esteem? On bonus and compensation scandals…

illustrating this with a nice old church bench, maybe not so comfortable to sit on, which was the purpose? :)

[A little edited and updated]. On Friday morning three people in a panel in a sofa in Good morning Sweden were talking about what had happened the previous week. For instance about bonus scandals here in Sweden concerning AMF and Folksam. AMF is administering retirement money for people and Folksam is an insurance company.

What they said is true for companies of all kinds all over the world. And it's maybe (probably) even worse in other bigger countries than Sweden.

In the panel, a man, Birger Schlaug, wondered (a little freely):

“What sort of self-image do those people have, when they take so many management commissions on them? Do they believe they are supermen [to different degrees? See about hubris]? Or do they have an enormous need to prove how clever they are [both to themselves and other people]? You take on those commissions pretty much like decorations to show how important you are?”

Here is Schlaug's blog (in Swedish).

Another man, a leader writer, wrote in a leader about motives for those sky-high compensations, about especially clever, competent and smart - men, something in the style "The Grounds to Hypocrizy. Ehrenberg examining the Great Mistake"…

“The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise’s outlook on man is that it is a certain elite, especially smart and clever/competent men that are demanded. Those are standing high above ordinary employees, fighting in entirely other divisions, and to protect the employees’ retirement money the labor unions have to accept, bend and bow and pay what is demanded.

The problem is neither that the CEO:s of Folksam or the former CEO of AMF are especially intelligent or over smart persons. They are salaried employees, good at organizing and delegating./…/THERE ARE NO SUPERMEN! And nobody is irreplaceable.”

No - and this is exactly what so many exhausted (not least women) have heard!

A female journalist in the article "Whom can we trust. Boëthius: Now the opposition has to rethink things":

“They earn a lot, they say, because of their heavy responsibility. However, this responsibility is now called in question.”

With all rights?

In another article you could read:

“However, the ones at the top in trade and industry as Göran Thunhammar and Urban Bäckström get through the criticism gallantly since they have no moral capital to loose. The capitalism is like that.”

And in another article “Time for a new world order” you can read:

“We consume to solve social and psychological problems, not practical [problems]./…/

The numbers of suicides are increasing in the material welfare.”

They write further that robots can’t be used everywhere. Culture, health care and other “soft parts” of the society then stand out as more and more expensive. This phenomenon is well-known and has gotten the name the Baumol Effect after the American William Baumol, who described the puzzling fact that the richer the society the less theater you can afford.

In the Swedish Wikipedia article you can read about the Baumol Effect that culture production can’t become more effective. To perform a play by Shakespeare or a music piece by Beethoven the same amounts of work and the same competence is needed now as when those pieces were written. I don’t know, maybe even more, because the high demands today? And everything we can compare with, all that is already written…

And on top, I don’t think that your efficiency (OR creativity, i.e. your capacity to solve problems for instance) can become especially high if you work six days a week or more and all your awoken time year after year with no breaks or any recovery, something a commentator on a blog referred to. But maybe that doesn’t matter for those highest up? The most important for them is that they can show or assert that they have been working all their awoken time.

And who have the greatest workload in fact? Quite ironically.

And some people are living in entirely other spheres… What are they fighting about compared to how other people have it in the world I wonder with a deep sigh.

I can’t help wondering what all those people have in their backpacks, what their inner drives are… Are they trying to fill bottomless needs? Trying to fill needs they should have gotten filled earlier and in other ways?

Yes, the most (psychologically) defended tend to lead.

And about work life in general; do we make a better job today and feel more satisfied than we did earlier? Are we happier? Do we laugh more and have more fun at work? Or less? Personally I think we have less fun and it seems as many people around me don't really get on well with their work or workplaces.

"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed" (T. Szasz?. See more about him here and quotes here.).