Here’s a fun, albeit fascinating idea from Mark Zawacki from the Milestone Group, a strategy and operations consulting firm based in Palo Alto, Calif. He questions on Facebook whether “Corporate America ought to institute a ‘trade’ mentality (vs firing) for execs just like Major League Baseball.” A board might say something like ” ‘Hey Ned (CFO), we just traded you for three AP clerks and a future (to be named) Treasurer. You’re off to Phoenix on Monday.’ Think it would work?”

It’s not really a workable concept–there’s no central body like MLB in Corporate America, and corporate executive jobs aren’t truly interchangeable like baseball teams. But the threat of such a trade might prompt a little more focus on performance than some CEOs have today. Corporations have the threat of firing, perhaps far worse than being traded, but they also have those cushy severance packages.

Food for thought, to be sure. And the pay levels for the two fields are certainly in the same stratosphere. But would other teams even want the traded CEOs? “Unfortunately,” says one of Zawacki’s commenters, “most should go to the DL.”

The original is here: BusinessWeek – Management IQ