There is definitely an attitude seen in corporations of meeting the minimums and serving your sentence. And if you do so, you are entitled to praise, financial reward, and satisfaction.
This attitude is present in many individual contributors, and in larger corporations it invades the management ranks as well. Another way to label these employees would be disengaged. They are the ones most likely to say "that's not my job", when asked to do something.
The disengaged are characterized by clock-watching, lack of sharing of ideas, no volunteering to help solve anything, and a laser focus on things like the details of what their job descriptions say they must do. In my own experience, these employees don't seem to "get it" that they aren't making a significant contribution to moving the company forward.
My guess is this attitude has its roots in childhood, and it seems to be a combination of several things: a focus on getting boxes checked in order to meet minimum requirements, a mental laziness which concedes "somebody" knows how all this "stuff" is supposed to work and its "not my job" to have to understand it, and a sense of entitlement which seems to infect a broad swath of our society.
Does this attitude impact large corporations more than small? Probably. Large organizations provide more cover for these disengaged people than small ones do -- but they are certainly present in both places.
The impact to the company is pretty obvious. Disengaged employees contribute less, are often out of alignment with the company's objectives, and take up a lot of management time. They significantly contribute to corporate inefficiency.
Companies generally battle the disengaged with speeches and educational programs. But there is definitely a hard-core disengaged group that can only be "fixed" by trading them for future draft choices.
See how some of my thoughts on Corporate Management play out in LEVERAGE, a corporate thriller. It is available in paperback at Createspace, and formatted for eReaders from Smashwords.
