Originally posted by Matt Cao:
The two examples I mentioned earlier still under investigate, they are not clear cut as I see them.
The examples you gave are not about favoritsm, they are about favortism overriding better judgement in the face of unethical behavior. There is a difference. The class of latter actions does not disuade the larger class of more general actions.
I might hire lots of CMU grads, bceause they are smart. This is good. But now let's suppose my friend also hired 3-4 CMU grads, and they turned out to embezzel from the company. Does this mean we should never hire CMU grads? Of course, not. Now maybe if somehting like 10-20% of all CMU grad acted like this we should be suspicious. However, in the examples you gave, although the money amounts were large, these scandals were only a very very very small fraction of all cases were accounting contracts were awarded to companies with prior connections. Again, as I noted, it was not favortism which cased trouble, but rather the incentive system (kind of like if in my example, my friend's company left the cash box unlocked and in open view).
--Mark