US vs European Business Model

Okay, I'm ready to move to Europe.

This was not part of the Republican sales pitch in the presidential election of 2000. Then we were told that order was going to be restored to the White House. The late-night, improvised shambles of the Clinton administration was to be replaced by a far more businesslike and professional set up. Meetings would start and end on time. Ties would be worn.

This 'CEO President' surrounded himself with other CEOs: vice-president Dick Cheney from Halliburton, and treasury secretary Paul O'Neil from Alcoa (who was later replaced by John Snow from CSX). If anyone knew about getting things done it would be these guys.

But last week tens of thousands of sick and vulnerable people languished for days, waiting for their government to get a grip.

[...]

Is there a connection between this crisis of leadership at the head of the US government, and the crisis of corporate leadership witnessed in the US over the past five years, at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen and Tyco?

Three guesses and the last two don't count.

But has the culture of US business had a damaging effect on the wider polity? Donald Kalff, visiting professor at the Leiden school of management in the Netherlands, believes so. Next month he publishes An UnAmerican Business, an attack on US management style, combined with a rallying cry for what he calls 'a new European enterprise model'.

[...]

It may seem harsh to write these words on 11 September of all days. But we have seen in the past two weeks what the cult of the CEO and the worst kind of US-style management can lead to: angry, starving people, citizens of the world's richest country, left without food or water. Remember those images the next time someone tells you that what we really need in this country is more US-style dynamism and leadership.

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