mtucker-732014 (6/25/2013)
This is a problem in many businesses and I believe stems from the near universal idea that a business should maximise shareholder value ahead of value generated for other stakeholders (customers, employees, the community). This is justified by the mistaken idea that shareholders are the only stakeholders who are exposed to any risk in the enterprise.Too many people have experienced (either directly, or having seen it happen to people they know) a company saying 'we value loyalty' at the interview and then forcing redundancy on employees at the first sign of difficulty.
Much of this is definitional. Improving stakeholder value can often improve shareholder value, or it cannot. Using one statement without the other, and without context is where we get into issues.
Also, do we want to improve value today (this quarter, this year), or the long term? Some of what David noted above is that people look to short term value more than long term value. Long term you develop more robustly and realize that security decisions can affect you later. Short term, do what MS says and eff it if it's wrong.