"fixation on quarterly performance"
"But a curse of modern times, especially in the US where there's the fixation on quarterly performance rather than longer term, sustainable growth."
The UK has its share of this stupidity, too. (Though perhaps, given that sentiment and greed plays such a part, it is rational if your only interest is to score some cash and run before the house falls down).
Before and during the bursting of the late 90s bubble, I was (for once) in a salaried post in the City working for a systems integrator and watched with fascination as its board (I was one step below, and of course ignored as soon as I started offering warnings), fixated on a mythical IPO, began bullying clients for payments (relationships rapidly ruined), slashing recruitment and training budgets (staff performance declined), pushing managers to bill hours (so they couldn't 'manage' any more) and cutting any unbillable time devoted to admin, team-building, professional development, etc etc. I vividly recall a very expensive performance & strategy away-weekend where I presented on how my department was realistically, actually going to perform for the next six months, given our pipeline, staffing, skills, training requirements and the exigencies of competent project work, and being met with blank stares since all others had offered a rosy picture of steadily increasing quarter-by-quarter revenues ... exactly what the board had to believe ("because that's what the analysts need to see"*¹)
You can fill in the remaining several months yourselves. Personally I'd have sooner forgotten IPO, kept the team, built up for the long term and grown organically. Instead the company was basically destroyed by its founders' obsession with the short term. Its very name has vanished. (No, I didn't refuse a fat payout, but things could have been so much better for everyone.) All in all it was a fascinating experience watching as the poisoned Kool-Aid spread its effect among previously quite sensible, rational people.
(The return to contracting/consulting, where I can stay outside of toxic management fads, avoid career structures infested with self-serving halfwits and, best of all, turn my back on office politicians, has become permanent. The coprorate world, I have sadly concluded, is full of greedy, lazy idiots.)
*¹ Not much actual analysis involved, then, is there?