Musa Hitam: Chartered private jet and RM1 million travel bill
When Zahid Md Arip of Perkasa described Musa as having “sindrom sayangkan kedudukan“, there may be some pinch of truth.
Sime Darby was once not only a blue chip company but a blue blood company. It was an organisation that had evolved a corporate culture that is aristocratic and at an early bureaucratic stage.
Chairmanship and Board membership came with fee and perks befitting of heavily titled retired top civil servants, politicians and corporate man.
It was also a place for Musa to maintain a lifestyle he yearns as someone almost making it as #1 man in the country.
In Sime Darby, the culture is such that no one offend each other or cross each other. It is in such an organisation that spending abuse is ever occurring and accountability is never practiced.
Aging Company
Back during the time this blogger was doing his MBA, we were recommended to read Ichak Adzes’s Corporate Life-cycle. It was about how and why corporations grow and die. There were mentioned some remedial actions recommended.
In our class discussion, we identified Sime Darby as an organisation that has passed its prime and were showing aging signs.
Unless the organisation get out of its aristocratic and bureaucratic tendencies, the organisation was dying. The CEO then was aristocrat, Tunku Ahmad Yahya of Kedah royal family and it was building bureaucracy only second to the Government.
After a bad foray into banking and finance, Sime was supposed to re-organise and re-energise itself into a “young” growing company. It never did so, but accelerated itself into a potential pathological death with a mega tri-merger.
Sime Darby was emulating the culture in Governmental organisation where form supersede functionality and organisational ritual is important.
