Kill a bonus, save a company?

Management scholar Henry Mintzberg has a provocative solution to the problem of executive bonuses: Don't trim or tweak them. Get rid of them altogether.

In a persuasive and clear-eyed essay in a special section of the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Mintzberg says that no matter how you configure bonuses, they create twisted incentives that inevitably enrich executives at the expense of shareholders, customers, and less privileged employees.

It's worth reading the whole thing, but here a...