Business to business, cash burn and stock options were some of the buzz words for chief executive officers of aspiring global corporations during the last decade. Today there's a new one and it's getting more usage all the time. "Perp-walk" is the expression which describes the police escorting a newly-arrested perpetrator of a crime past a throng of assembled bystanders, journalists and flashing cameras, writes Sheila Flannagan.
The people doing the perp-walks are not reviled drug barons or mob chiefs, but men who were once hailed as the guardians of the new economy. They are the chief executives of global corporations which are now under investigation for fraudulent accounting practices. Once they presided over the soaring value of those companies, now they're watching them collapse and, with them, their own reputations as the most powerful men in the world.
It's true that, during the last 10 years, there was no wisdom as well received as that of the corporate CEO. Every time you opened a newspaper you were treated to a story about a man made good, now worth a fortune thanks to the generosity of his board which had rewarded good company performance with massive bonuses. Everybody wanted to know how they did it, how they presided over the rise and rise of global corporations. They popped up on business programmes, then on late-night chat shows, then prime-time TV shows extolling the virtues of the power-lunch and the American Dream. And then they wrote books.
A skim through the bestseller lists of a year or so ago shows how much people wanted to read the thoughts of luminaries - fortunately, perhaps, none of whom is currently personally under investigation for fraudulent accounting - such as Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca and "Neutron" Jack Welch.
Welch's effort, Straight from the Gut, earned him an advance of $7.1 million. (Not as much as he'd make in a good month at his company GE perhaps, but not to be sneezed at nonetheless. And certainly at least the amount he saved by making over 100,000 people redundant when he took the helm as CEO.) So what crumbs of wisdom were falling from those rich men's tables?
Well, basically if it's not making you money, get rid of it. If it is, make more out of it. Cut costs, embrace technology and be ruthless. All of which neatly distils into "get rid of most of your staff and replace them with some type of software if at all possible". And people rushed to read these business bibles and learn from them, in the process buying millions of copies and making the company executives even greater superstars than they were already.
Not only that, but they started to think like them too. I had a conversation with a director of a company once who told me his staff were the biggest drain on its resources. Fewer people, fewer costs, more money was his mantra. For whom, I asked. He looked surprised. For the company, he told me.
SINCE it was a private company, what he actually meant was more money for him and his fellow directors. And why not - isn't that what everyone wants? To make money quickly and easily and not to have to worry about how many people are trampled on in the process? Perhaps, for people like my director friend. But - if the latest business bestseller lists are anything to go by - not for everyone. Because the weighty tomes of Bill and Lee and Jack have been replaced by a very different type of book.
In the current top five paperbacks are two books which have nothing to do with how to get to the top and stay there. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, is an account of the author's attempts to live in America by taking minimum wage jobs in roadside restaurants, various hotels and companies like Wal-Mart.
The fact that she had to hold down two jobs at a time to pay her rent is a greater commentary on the state of the US economy than Bill Gates telling us about Business at the Speed of Thought or Jack's mantra of "fix it, sell it or close it".
Also on the list is Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, a totally scary account of the rise and rise of the hamburger chains. As Schlosser points out, American corporations have "worked hard to avoid the rigours of the market by eliminating and absorbing their rivals". And this is the crux of so much about global corporations. The bigger they are the greater their power. Not necessarily to suddenly hike the price of a hamburger meal (and would you like to upgrade that, sir?) but to dictate the kind of meal you're having at all.
And to dictate where your beef comes from and how the cattle are fed and what size the potatoes for the fries should be so that the farmer who doesn't want to play ball doesn't have a market for his goods any more.
Companies, not politicians, are the prime movers in shaping the laws and regulations of nations. They lobby public representatives as they try to make the case that what benefits a big corporation benefits us all. But does it? Countries like Ireland talk about making it easy for companies to do business here. About attracting inward investment. About staying corporate-friendly.
But we should be asking what we demand of our businesses in return. We are entitled to insist on certain levels of behaviour.
Because whatever we truly want, it's not the photo opportunity of seeing a chief executive officer do a perp-walk outside the Financial Services Centre while his redundant employees look on with a hamburger in their hands.