[jsyang00]

> Recall the incentive structures are made by management.

I think more incentive structures naturally emerge over time. Managers have other managers who have other managers... etc who have some different set of incentives. There are also shareholders

A lot of time the right smart thing is done anyway, but usually that's luck in having a couple of good smart people in your org chart chain, or just the rising tide of the economy making it easier for generosity to prevail

Management "blew it", but there were probably no negative consequences to them in the case. There are negative consequences for the shareholders when this sort of stuff happens over time in the aggregate... which I believe you get to call the "Principal Agent Problem" if you earn an Economics degree or understand game theory or something...

[scrubs]

I hear you ... and in fact you make a good point re: couple of smart guys (or ladies - sometimes the guys are the problem). It's essential to have people with enough self awareness and security and medium to long term thinking to not bow to as I perjoriatively labeled it small 'c' culture (as opposed to the good cap 'C' culture). Culture like political parties are only as good as the fundamentals they hold up long term.

Part of that skill is knowing what can go wrong. And to that end there's no better short read than Ishikawa's tqm the japanese way.

I also agree with your other point: defects are often seen in aggregate when unfortunately the damage is done and cynasysm and infighting are almost unstoppable.