The corporate view on Shadowruns, Outsource labour and cut-throat management in the postmodern world Options

[EvilP]

I'd like to know what kind of decision making goes on before a corp decides to hire Shadowrunners rather than sending in their own teams.

I imagine that somewhere a manager runs some risk calculations. Turns out there may be a 70% chance of a strike team taking at least one casualty trying to do some industrial sabotage that might improve the quarterly profits. Risking a corp elite team easily worth over 150,000 per head in combined training, gear and medical enhancements might not be worth it when you can hire someone off the street with only slightly subpar skills and enhancements for only a fraction of that cost.

If the runners get wiped out to a man then that would have been included in the corp approved risk assessment and the corp won't even have to pay the runners. If the strike team somehow gets wiped out to a man then that's a loss of very valuable hard to replace company assets and possibly a very quick end to the careers of those involved.

In fact, why spend money paying your strike team's wages, purchasing their gear and offering them bonuses to get them to agree to radical performance enhancing surgery? You can ignore runners for as long as you want, pay them only when necessary and then watch them spend that very own pay improving their cyberware/gear/talismans!? Apart from the occasional disloyalty Shadowrunners are perfect employees.

[Ayeohx]

I'd like to know what kind of decision making goes on before a corp decides to hire Shadowrunners rather than sending in their own teams.

I imagine that somewhere a manager runs some risk calculations. Turns out there may be a 70% chance of a strike team taking at least one casualty trying to do some industrial sabotage that might improve the quarterly profits. Risking a corp elite team easily worth over 150,000 per head in combined training, gear and medical enhancements might not be worth it when you can hire someone off the street with only slightly subpar skills and enhancements for only a fraction of that cost.

If the runners get wiped out to a man then that would have been included in the corp approved risk assessment and the corp won't even have to pay the runners. If the strike team somehow gets wiped out to a man then that's a loss of very valuable hard to replace company assets and possibly a very quick end to the careers of those involved.

In fact, why spend money paying your strike team's wages, purchasing their gear and offering them bonuses to get them to agree to radical performance enhancing surgery? You can ignore runners for as long as you want, pay them only when necessary and then watch them spend that very own pay improving their cyberware/gear/talismans!? Apart from the occasional disloyalty Shadowrunners are perfect employees.

Deniable assets man! If Renraku's Red Samurai are found creeping around in my secret labs and I kill them I can go to the Corporate Council and say "Look, I've got proof, I want compensation". If Renraku sends shadowrunners and you kill them you don't know where they came from. And even if you capture them Corporate Council will be less likely to back you based on a runner's confession, no matter what magic or tech you used to extract it.

[Fezig]

That lays the groundwork for the line of reasoning that leads to all but the larger corps not having a security strike force, and even very few of those have them. The single biggest advantage however is that if you have your own elite group, they are on call 24/7 for you. You don't lose valuable time setting a meet, etc. To simplify, shadowrunners are great at terrorism, and your own elite force is ideal for counter-terrorism.

[Ayeohx]

That lays the groundwork for the line of reasoning that leads to all but the larger corps not having a security strike force, and even very few of those have them. The single biggest advantage however is that if you have your own elite group, they are on call 24/7 for you. You don't lose valuable time setting a meet, etc. To simplify, shadowrunners are great at terrorism, and your own elite force is ideal for counter-terrorism.

Indeed. Due to how compartmentalized corporations tend to be expect each facility, branch, etc to have it's own "External Assets Manager" or "Auxillary Human Resources Representative" (aka Mr Johnson) with their own budget for dealing with shadowy issues that affect their office/branch/operations. Even though you are attacking a Renraku facility doesn't mean that the particular facility has all of the resources of Renraku to counter the threat. Everyone is dealing with a budget and they sure don't want to get their superiors involved by going overbudget; especially when your employer may have you "replaced".

[LurkerOutThere]

As has been stated many times, the reason for shadowrunners is not lack of talent or bodies on the corps part, it's lack of willingness to get caught.