SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010
KLMNO
EZ BD
B5
What’s not to like about your big, fat bonus? F
BY PETER CAPPELLI, MICHAEL USEEM, MATTHEW BIDWELL
AND JOHN PAUL MACDUFFIE
or the past 20 years, during midtermexams at theWharton School, we’ve asked our MBA students to write a paper about how they were paid and man-
aged at their last job. These students average about 28 years of age; many of them have already worked for big Wall Street firms and received bigWall Street bonuses. Managers have long believed that the
prospect of a bonus can motivate young workers to work harder and smarter, even in a year like this one, when bonuses are expected to
fall.Bymaking a huge amount of an employee’s compen- sation — possibly even twice his or her regular salary—dependent on the firm’s results and the individual’s perfor- mance,managers hope to align workers’ incentives with those of the larger company. Yet, in reviewing the roughly 800
essays our students handed in this year, we see a different story. Students in- creasingly distrust the bonus systemand contend that annual bonuses are too large a part of theway they aremanaged, often serving as a substitute for thought-
ful supervision ormeaningful reviews. “I remember someone telling me
before I received my first bonus that there are two proper responses to get- ting a bonus: ‘F-you’ or ‘F-you, I quit,’ ” wrote one student who, like the others quoted here, did not want us to reveal their names. “Managers treated our performance reviews as a joke,” another student noted. “This not only demoral- ized the junior employees, but it also made it very difficult formanagement to equitably determine bonus numbers.” Many students said that theywere not
told how they were performing and that the bonus payment served as the de facto performance appraisal: Here’s your bo- nus—it should tell youwhatwe think of what you have done over the year. Students also frequently reported that the way their bonuses were handled actually decreased their motivation and that the system’s perceived unfairness caused themto quit. “During my last year at the firm, the
junior associates did not receive a bonus at all, while the senior-level managers did,” one student reported. “No explana- tion was provided other than the fund was not performing well.” And another observed that bonuses were heavily influenced by subjective factors, such as which partners liked which employees. And it wasn’t only the students who felt short-changed that headed for the
door. “Despite getting a fat bonus check, I quit my job right after,” one student wrote. The reason? “While I was happy with the bonus after my first year, I was frustrated with the perceived lack of procedural justice in the reviewprocess,” he wrote. Huge bonuses create their own prob-
lems because they foster uncertainty. One student described how stressful it was to have around $200,000 hanging in the balance: “I never again want to be in a situation where I have such a high degree of uncertainty relative to my compensation,” she wrote. But a lack of clarity in bonuses doesn’t
just spark arguments over who picks up the tab at Del Posto. Vague pay policies may also lead to poor investment deci- sions for the company as a whole. “Taking unpopular positions on the
prospects of an investment in opposi- tion to a partner may have helped the fund avoid poor investments, but this behavior would likely result in a lower annual bonus,” one student wrote. “As such, I felt incentivized to agree with my superiors rather than make good investments.” Related problems come from the
common Wall Street model of tying bonuses to specific deals. “When I com- pleted amultimillion-dollar acquisition, I had doubts about our thesis and the viability of the investment,” one student
explained. “However, I knew that I would receive a higher bonus if I en- dorsed and completed the deal, which I did.” If companies shouldn’t reward em-
ployeeswho toe the party line or land big clients, should they just dole out the same bonus to everyone at year’s end? Well, that’s not fair either. “[It] became a problem when one
person put in significantly lesswork and yetwe all knewwewere going to be paid
“I felt incentivized to agree with my superiors rather than make good investments.” An MBA student at the Wharton School, discussing the power of bonuses on Wall Street
the same,” wrote a student who worked for a company that rewarded equal bonuses. “It became less motivating to work hard, especially when if you worked hard and did a good job, you would be put on more projects and be asked to take on more work, creating a further discrepancy between effort put in and reward received.” Fortunately, there were many happy
students — and the happiest were by no means the best paid. The most impor-
employees persists. But at least for this next generation of business leaders, it’s simply not true. When the public is already infuriated by outsize bonuses for chief executives, clinging to thismodel is a bad idea. Management matters. Good management pays off. Badmanagement — including ignoring management alto- gether—will cost us.
The authors are professors at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
tant factor behind job satisfaction was how supervisors handled performance appraisals. Bosses who took the time to give real feedback had happy employees. Those who blew it off had resentful and confused workers. “Given that junior employees were
spending 90 hours per week at work,” one student wrote, “we all wanted to be recognized for our efforts.” For many executives, the myth that a big bonus is enough to ensuremotivated
Ol’ Blue Eyes, seen anew sinatra from B1
shoulders, and to his credit, that labor produces a stream of insights. Kaplan really gets what made Sinatra unique. He understands the crucial importance of arrangers likeNelson RiddleandAxel Stordahl in the Sinatradiscography,and he ably dissects Sinatra’s strange court- ship rituals with mobsters (which may have extended to the singer serving as a Mafia bagman). Above all, Kaplan grasps how unsuit-
ed—and at the same time, how perfect — Sinatra was for the job of American idol. He was an only child, irreversibly Italian in a WASP world, scarred by forceps and acne and a mastoid opera- tion, so skinny he nearly disappeared behind his microphone. His drive and hunger, though, were outsize, and his show-biz breaks came slowly but punc- tually: first with Major Bowes’s “Origi- nal Amateur Hour,” then a stint with bandleader Harry James, and then the big time with Tommy Dorsey. Sinatrawassupposedtobejustoneof
the boys behind Dorsey’s trombone, but the more time he spent in front, the more potent a spell he cast. “What he did to women,” recalled Dorsey, “was something awful.” What he did to girls was even worse. A publicist who watched a 1943 Sinatra concertwasable to pick out one sound above the bobby- soxers’ din: “a low moan, emanating from a lanky black-haired girl. . . . It was a sound he had heard before — only in very different, much more private, cir- cumstances.” This element of sexual hysteria was
new to popular music, and to see it generated by a beanpole in floppy bow ties (sewn by his wife) was a mystery even to Sinatra’s contemporaries—but not to Sinatra. He understood, as one journalist wrote, that “the male of the species has never developed a more effective seduction line than the display of frailty.” In short, the little guy fromHoboken
scored. Again and again. And when Hollywood beckoned, Sinatraseemedto devote as much time to chasing famous skirts as he did to churning out indiffer- ent musicals. Never mind that he had Nancyandthe three
kidsathome.There wasawaron,andaworldofconvenient- ly abandoned women just waiting for him.His sexual escapades were so poor- ly concealed that by the end of World War II, writes historian William Man-
WILLIAM P. GOTTLIEB
Frank Sinatra was supposed to be just one of the boys behind Tommy Dorsey’s trombone, but the more time he spent in front, the more potent a spell he cast.
because his substrate was pure emo- tion. None of that Bing Crosby coolness (and coldness). The qualifiers that clus- ter around the young Sinatra—hysteri- cal, hypersensitive, obsessive-compul- sive, suicidal — suggest not the tough guy he desperately wanted to be but a diva, an inescapably feeling artist who “would never stop yearning, because he could never get what he truly wanted. And he could never—ever—get it fast enough.” Kaplan is no slouch at channeling
It says something about Sinatra that the only way he could heal his heart was to break ours.
chester, Sinatra was “the most hated man in the armed services”: a 4-F cuckolder who was, symbolically or actually, getting it on with the girls back home. Inevitably, those same girls grew up
and got married, and in the ensuing years Sinatra’s record sales and drawing power suffered a corresponding de-
cline.Bythe early 1950s, hewasreduced to booking his own gigs and recording cheesy novelty tunes like “Mama Will Bark,” a dream duet for two canines, complete with yips and woof. Clearly, the Voice would need a newplatform or risk going silent altogether. It’s always tempting to turn the first
half of Sinatra’s career into a morality play: a rake’s progress and reformation. But to hear Kaplan tell it, Sinatrawasno more coherent in success than in failure
other men’s voices, having previously ghosted memoirs for Jerry Lewis and JohnMcEnroe, but it must be said that the effect of filtering data through Sina- tra’s Runyonesque swagger is not al- ways pleasing. “The smile on Big Nan- cy’s face whenever he stopped by re- minded him of that chick in the paint- ing by da Vinci.” And in attempting to divine the feel-
ings of long-dead folks,Kaplantoo often teeters between New Journalese and mass-market romance: “And at that moment, Nancy literally had to hold on to the doorway for support: the earth had spun off its axis. . . .Her green-gold eyes said that she knew all his secrets. . . . Both knewthe bottomless loneliness that stalks the deep watches of the night. . . . But their love was like a fire that flamed up and consumed them
both.” A little of this goes a long way, and
“Frank” is made still longer by the necessity of recounting Sinatra’s turbu- lent relationship withAva Gardner, that “gorgeous nihilist” and Frank’s “true partner in the opera that was his life.” It’s a tale full of sound and fury, yes, but its endless cycle of wild arguments and wild makeup sex is as exhausting for a reader as it must have been for the lovers themselves. We can at least be grateful to Gardner
for schooling Sinatra so thoroughly in the ways of his own heart. For that we are all the richer. Kaplan makes the conventional deci-
sion to end Volume One with Sinatra’s Oscar-winning triumph as the doomed Maggio in “FromHere to Eternity.” (And by the way, Kaplan discounts theMario Puzo-inspired legend that the Mob se- cured the role for Sinatra. Blame it instead on Eli Wallach’s agents for de- manding too much money.) Tomy mind, though, the true turning
point of Sinatra’s career was the series of melancholy concept albums he put out in the mid-1950s for Capitol Re- cords: “Songs for Young Lovers,” “In the Wee Small Hours” and, most supreme, “Only the Lonely.” Buttressed by Rid- dle’s mournful strings and noir horns, Sinatra plunges so religiously into his own despair that he almost doesn’t return. (And maybe, somewhere down there, he meetsWagner andMahler.) It’s not just the specter of Ava Gard-
ner he’s seeking in those aural depths, it’s his own extinction. And has death ever sounded more beautiful? It says something about Sinatra that the only way he could heal his heart was to break ours.
bookworld@washpost.com
likened to racists, as purveyors of irra- tional fear and loathing. Opposition to same-sexmarriagemust be treated just like support for now long-gone anti- miscegenationlaws. This strategyis thecounselofdesper-
ation. In 30 states, the people have protected traditional marriage by con- stitutional amendment: In no state where the questionhas beenput direct- ly to voters has same-sexmarriage been adopted by democratic majorities. But the advocates of a revolution in the law ofmarriage see anopportunity inPerry v. Schwarzenegger, currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Inhisdistrict court rulinginthe case in August, Judge Vaughn Walker held that California’s Proposition 8 en- acted, “without reason, a privatemoral view” about thenature ofmarriage that cannot properly be embodied in public policy. Prop 8’s opponents are hoping for similar reasoning from the appeals courtand,ultimately, fromtheSupreme Court. The SPLC’s report on “hate groups”
gives the game away. It notes that no group is listed merely for “viewing ho- mosexuality as unbiblical.” But when describing standard expressions of
Opposing gay marriage isn’t hate speech
hate from B1
liberty. The offense? The app is a “hate fest.” Fewer than 8,000 people petition for theapptogo;morethanfivetimesas many petition Apple for its reinstate- ment, so far tono avail. Finally, on “$#*!MyDad Says,” a CBS
sitcomwatchedbymorethan10million weekly viewers, an entire half-hour epi- sode is devoted to a depiction of the disapproval of homosexuality as bigot- ry, a form of unreasoning intolerance that clings to the pastwith a coarse and
mean-spiritedjudgmentalism.Andthis on a show whose title character is fa- mously irascible and politically incor- rect, but who in this instance turns out to be fashionably cuddly and up-to- date. What’sgoingonhere?Clearlyadeter-
mined effort is afoot, in cultural bas- tions controlled by the left, to anathe- matize traditional views of sexual mo- rality, particularly opposition to same- sexmarriage,astheexpressionof “hate” that cannotbe toleratedinadecent civil society. The argument over same-sex marriage must be brought to an end, and the debate considered settled. De- fenders of traditionalmarriagemust be
Christian teaching, that we must love the sinner while hating the sin, the SPLC treats them as “kinder, gentler language” thatonlycoversupunreason-
inghatredforgaypeople.Christiansare free to hold their “biblical” views, you see, butwe knowthat opposition to gay marriage cannot have any basis in rea- son. Although protected by the Consti- tution, these religious views must be sequestered from the public square, where reason, as distinguished from faith,mustprevail. Marginalize, privatize, anathema-
tize: These are the successive goals of gay-marriage advocates when it comes to their opponents. First, ignore the arguments of tradi-
tional marriage’s defenders, that mar- riage has always existed in order to bringmen andwomen together so that childrenwill havemothers and fathers, and that same-sex marriage is not an expansion but a dismantling of the in- stitution. Instead, assert that no ratio- nal arguments along these lines even exist and so no refutation is necessary, and insinuate that those who merely want to defend marriage are “anti-gay thugs” or “theocrats” or “Taliban,” as some criticshave said.
KRISTIN LENZ THE WASHINGTON POST Second, drive the wedge between
faith and reason, chasing traditional religious arguments on marriage and moralityunderground, asprivate forms of irrationality. Finally, decree the victory of the new
publicmorality—here the judges have their role in the liberal strategy — and read the opponents of the new dispen- sationoutofpolite society, as the crazed bigots of ourday. American democracy doesn’t need ci-
vility enforcers, nor must it become a public square with signs reading “no labels allowed.” Robust debate is neces- sarily passionate debate, especially on a questionlikemarriage.But thechargeof “hate” isnotacontributiontoargument; it’s the recourse of people who would rathernothaveanargumentatall. That is no way to conduct public
business onmomentous questions in a free democracy. “Hate” cannot be per- mittedtobe the conversationstopper in the same-sex marriage debate. The Americanpeople, a tolerant bunchwho have actedtoprotectmarriage inthree- fifths of the states, just aren’t buying it. And they still won’t buy it even if the judgesdo.
mjfranck@msn.com
HATEHATE
HATE
HATE
HATE
HATE HATE
HATEHATEHATEHATEHATE
HATEHATE
HATE HATE
HATE
HATE
HATE
HATE
HATE
HATE HATE
HATE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160