In the industry one often hears stories about how a successful, stable, but slow-growing company is taken over by "MBA types" and is ruined. The steps often involve:

* Focus becomes on meeting "quarterly profit numbers"
* Long-term quality safeguards and personnel are tossed our outsourced
* R&D gutted of any research not viable beyond 18 months
* Personnel shuffled around for no clear rhyme or reason, but some suspect MBA is putting his/her buddies in where they want to be.
* Products are rushed out the door with questionable quality or insufficient testing
* '''Profit does indeed increase for a year or two'''
* MBA and his/her buddies all get a big bonus and pat themselves on the back
* Complaints from customers start to pile up as quality and service drops
* MBA hires a "feel good" expert to help the answer desks be more friendly and courteous on the phone, despite not actually solving real problems. They learn delay tricks such as, "What fax, we didn't receive any fax."
* MBA collects his big reward and moves on to another company.
* The reputation of the company and employee morale is shot
* The best employees leave
* Company goes into a tailspin as their poor reputation scares away customers
* The company has to merge with a competitor to stay alive. The recently-leaving MBA rigged it so that he gets a "merging consultant fee" or the like in the process. The competitor is willing to comply with such stipulations because they welcome less competition.

Essentially the good '''reputation of the company is milked''' for short-term profits and the company is eventually killed or diminished in the process. In the end the marketplace is left with shitty oligopolies who don't have to really compete. 

There are two economic incentives at play here:
* It's possible to exchange long-term profits for short-term profits
* Competitors reward people who kill off their competition, directly or indirectly

It's a political side-effect of our laws encouraging short-term profits and lack of anti-trust enforcement, which is often painted as "meddling government intervention" and against laissez faire.
----
See also: WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom
-----
CategoryOrganizationalAntiPattern