Productivity growth across the West, including the UK, has seen a dramatic slowdown since the financial crisis of the late 2000s. While economists typically seek quantifiable explanations, Paul Ormerod, an honorary professor at the Alliance Business School at the University of Manchester, suggests that corporate culture could be a crucial, overlooked factor.
Ormerod highlights recent incidents, such as the National Air Traffic Control System (NATS) apologising for its third major technical fault in three years. Airlines UK expressed "serious concerns," while Ryanair and Wizz Air called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign, describing him as "an overpaid failure" despite receiving over £2m in bonuses in recent years.
Similarly, at Heathrow last year, the chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, reportedly slept through emergency calls during a fire that led to 1,300 flight cancellations. He had received £3.2m in the previous year. Ormerod posits that such executive actions, alongside those of bankers in the late 2000s, may have eroded employee respect and willingness to go beyond the minimum required in their jobs, impacting productivity which relies on cooperation and goodwill.