As long as the purchased software is worthwhile (i.e. it makes employees more effective; the company gets more output per employee expense dollar), this trend should actually increase employee pay. Higher output per employee allows a higher salary per employee while still being profitable.
> many people in USA believe that corporation has duty to increase shareholder value. And similar stupid ideas.
No more stupid than the idea that companies are supposed to exist solely for the benefit of the employee. Shareholders are the ones that put the money up to start and grow the company in the first place, so yes, there is an obligation to shareholder value.
Don't like that? Then you are free to start a company that doesn't take investment.
Shareholders are only able to make contracts because the government uses guns to arrest people who break contracts. Don't like it? Move to an offshore oil rig, I guess.
Shareholders take a risk in their investment, mitigated by making it more fluid as they can easily trade the shares compared to more traditional investments.
There's however no law that holds a figurative gun to the heads of corporation that their duty is to increase the value of those shares.
Not sure if you are being facetious, but that's in fact the law. The board is a fiduciary of shareholder (investor) money. Is that a great idea for society? Not sure, until it changes we live in the world we live in.
And on the productivity point, that makes a good theoretical case but it is just not demonstrated by historical data. In the US, in the past 50 years, it even has a name (the pay-productivity gap or the wage gap). You can look at productivity vs wages since 1970 and see how they have not correlated. Further, you can go into income and wealth inquality growth over the same time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...) and see how the wealth generated by the productivity gains has been highly concentrated in the top 0.1% and 0.01% wealthiest. Some people will talk about real or nominal wages (adjustments with something called the Implicit Price Deflator) that show wages purchasing power increasing, but I think one can look at costs of home, college, and medical care and other critical things in social mobility that have increased in cost far exceeding inflation as complications to that idea.
Fiduciary duty means that the board is supposed to be honest with the shareholders and not actively work against the corporation. That does not mean, in fact, that they are required to put growth of shareholder value to any respect.
> Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often cited as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America. At the same time, the case affirmed the business judgment rule, leaving Ford an extremely wide latitude about how to run the company.
[...]
> In the 1950s and 1960s, states rejected Dodge repeatedly, in cases including AP Smith Manufacturing Co v. Barlow or Shlensky v. Wrigley. The general legal position today is that the business judgment that directors may exercise is expansive. Management decisions will not be challenged where one can point to any rational link to benefiting the corporation as a whole.
The caveat is important. If a company says, "Customers don't like it when rich people in suits treat <x> like shit. Therefore, if we spend a small amount of money treating <x> better, this will make our customers happy, and they will buy more of our products, recouping the cost and bringing in more profit for our shareholders." Substitute the environment, animals, customers, employees, people in Africa, cancer patients, the children, etc. It doesn't matter if you're completely full of shit, you just have to make the argument.
So while you're correct that companies have a primary requirement to increase profits for their shareholders, in practice, this requirement is incredibly loose, to the point of not actually being a requirement at all.
Doesn't higher output per an employee lead to a change for demand of that type of employee, lowering pay?
It always seemed to me the value an employee brings is the upper bound on pay (demand drops near 0 over that), but the pay is determined by supply and demand for that labor.
