Except that it is only local or small risk minimization; the catastrophic existential risks end up maximized to the point of becoming inevitable.
With companies, the MBAs happily optimize away anything that isn't immediate revenue. So manufacturing gets offshored, along with all the deep knowledge of how to make things. R&D gets shrunk and minimized because it is a quarterly expense with returns not immediately specified. They kill or sell off all the "dogs" of products and try to milk the "cash cows". This makes the numbers look great until things change and the "cash cows" need updating for a new market environment. But the company now has no idea how to do it because they have no seasoned and up to date product development, no R&D technology development, and no manufacturing know-how. So, it goes into a death spiral if it hasn't already been disrupted.
On the societal level, MBAs justified the western world outsourcing all the manufacturing because it was "fungible" and cheaper to do it offshore, made more profits this quarter. Meanwhile, all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony, and now has both economic and strategic chokeholds on the western democracies (everything from corners on lithium and solar panel markets, to spies in western corporations, to backdoors in key commercial and likely military microchips). The entire strategic advantage of the west was sold out for a few dozen quarters of increased profits. This will go down as a colossal strategic blunder of historic proportions.
Ken White (of "Popehat" twitter fame) has a great article explaining how this and similar court cases during the first world war are the origin of the (poor) "fire in a crowded theater" argument against certain kinds of free speech:
Except that it is only local or small risk minimization; the catastrophic existential risks end up maximized to the point of becoming inevitable.
With companies, the MBAs happily optimize away anything that isn't immediate revenue. So manufacturing gets offshored, along with all the deep knowledge of how to make things. R&D gets shrunk and minimized because it is a quarterly expense with returns not immediately specified. They kill or sell off all the "dogs" of products and try to milk the "cash cows". This makes the numbers look great until things change and the "cash cows" need updating for a new market environment. But the company now has no idea how to do it because they have no seasoned and up to date product development, no R&D technology development, and no manufacturing know-how. So, it goes into a death spiral if it hasn't already been disrupted.
On the societal level, MBAs justified the western world outsourcing all the manufacturing because it was "fungible" and cheaper to do it offshore, made more profits this quarter. Meanwhile, all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony, and now has both economic and strategic chokeholds on the western democracies (everything from corners on lithium and solar panel markets, to spies in western corporations, to backdoors in key commercial and likely military microchips). The entire strategic advantage of the west was sold out for a few dozen quarters of increased profits. This will go down as a colossal strategic blunder of historic proportions.
All thanks to trying to standardize management.