Author:
Claire Wright
(MENAFN- The Conversation) Alan Joyce is Australia'shighest-paid chief executive .
Alan Joyce is one of the Financial Review'sten most covertly powerful people .
Alan Joyce writesheartwarming notes to children .
Alan Joyce isgetting married .
And he is apparently some sort ofsuperhero .
Something about chief executives brings forth testimonialslike this , published in the News Corporation tabloids last month, which followed the revelation that Joyce was Australia's highest paid corporate chief (taking homeA$24 millionin 2018-19).
Penned by Angela Mollard, a journalist specialising in celebrities, itsaid he had
Joyce, and all the best chief executives, she argued, were
Further, executives like Joyce deserved to be rewarded for
It's been said before
I've been examining the language used to describe Australia's elite executives over the past 100 years, and what's being said about Joyce is familiar -right down to the use of the word 'genius'.
This kind of talk, repeated for more than a century now, leads us astray if we keep repeating it. It creates misunderstandings about how large companies work. Chief executives aren't superhuman, their characteristics are not those of their companies, they don't single-handedly determine the fate of those companies or personally employ their workers, they aren't necessarily selfless or patriotic, and they don't necessarily have the best interests of the nation at heart.
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Sir Charles Mackellar , chairman of the Mutual Life & Citizens' Assurance Company and a director of a host of other companies including the Colonial Sugar Refining Company was labelled a ' genius ' when he died in 1914.
FA Govett, the London-based head of Australia's
Zinc Corporation was labelled as a ' man of exceptional ability ' in 1926.
Often they had higher ideals.
Sir William Lennon Raws , a director of four of Australia's biggest companies including BHP and Elder Smith, was a ' well-meaning capitalist with a dream '.
Like Joyce and his contemporaries that work their ' butts off to do the right thing ', Raws was
It's their own work
Daily Telegraph, May 6, 1926
Executives have long been seen as the sole reason for their company's success. In 2019, Joyce single-handedly ' took a beleaguered company and transformed it '.
Similarly, in the late 1800s, BHP directorWilliam Jamiesonwassolely responsiblefor the development of the Broken Hill region.
Robert Philpof Burns Philp and Company was an Australian patriot who ' controlled her destinies during a critical period '.
Industrialist and car manufacturerEdward Holdenworked tirelessly to ' benefit the state and the company' .
Corporate director and university chancellorSir Normand Maclaurinwas 'endowed with talents of a very high order […] having at heart the welfare of the nation'.
They're exceptional
Joyce's success might be due to his ' big dick energy ', but he wasn't the first. In the early 1900s,Joseph Pratt– director of the National Bank of Australasia, the Land Mortgage Bank, the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company andMetropolitan Gas Company – was described in the most masculine of terms as abig man
Sir Mark Sheldon- chairman of the Waterloo Glass Bottle Works, a director of the Australian Bank of Commerce, and vice president of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce - alsoalso big,
Painting corporate chiefs like this gives corporations a human face. It helps convince customers and investors that their money is in safe hands. If Alan Joyce is a 'good man', then the Qantas Group is seen as a good company.
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It also makes executives untouchable. After all, if they are blessed with unique or exceptional abilities, and if their company is doing well (whatever the reason), it is hard to argue with the millions being spent on them.
Even if it's $24 million, even if it's more.
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