Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
The problem of "incompetent" senior management is worldwide, just look at Wall street at present.
There is a type of person who is internally "broken" and cannot empathise with people, yet who are highly intelligent and hard working. They have recently been characterised as "Industrial Psychopaths" or suffering "Narcissistic Personality Disorder". They have a huge sense of entitlement, a grandiose sense of their own self importance, will lie and scheme to get ahead, they do "ruthless" very well, since, being unable to empathise with their victims, they sleep well at night. Arrogance is also a dead giveaway. They surround themselves with sycophants, most of who will have exactly the same personality and are quite prepared to grease their way up the management tree by sucking up to the boss.
Now in our efforts towards equity and fairness, which are noble goals, we now hire essentially on "Merit", and hardworking narcissists do "merit" very well. In "the bad old days" of class and the old school tie as a prerequisite for a senior management role these people could not get ahead, because by virtue of class and the old school tie, the selectors had observed the behaviour of these loathsome creatures over many years, and under many conditions, and knew well enough not to have anything to do with them, no matter how glittering their resumes read.
These creeps infest the upper management of many large companies, and HR Departments do not yet have the tools to weed them out, in fact some of them were even hired by companies for their deliberate ruthlessness, which was seen as a virtue at the time.
P.S. And looking at the Board of BA makes my point for me., especially the Chairman's resume.
Last edited by Sunfish; 28th Mar 2008 at 18:37.