Originally Posted by
LowObservable
The bean counters, and I am not one, are only doing what the shareholders want: to increase the revenues per share, whichever the consequences are.
In all too many cases, this has been overtaken by the desire to increase shareholder value, which is not the same thing. Dividends and buybacks don't increase revenue, but they increase share price while diverting cash that would otherwise be used for internal investment, such as creating soundly engineered new products.
Running a business like Boeing requires that the beancounters go for 'long term greed'. Unfortunately, as with many companies they are aiming at short term greed and end of year bonuses which only puts the company into a spiral dive of continual short term thinking. Long term greed could possibly be enforced by paying management and beancounters in stock options that they can only convert to cash after say 10 years from issue. The management attitudes would change considerably.