What is Rewarded?

 American society puts individual achievement as the primary good.  

A collective society would put community achievement above individual achievement.

That is to say that a collective society would reward an individual whose efforts improves the community more generously that it would reward an individual whose achievements, no matter how great, does nothing to improve the community.

But isn't this what a corporation does when it rewards it's CEO a huge salary, etc?  The compensation is reward for what the CEO, presumably, has done for the wealth of the corporation's stock holders.  In theory, the CEO's compensation should have a reasonable relationship to the wealth generated by the corporation.

One explanation for why some CEO's are over-compensated, paid for more than they are worth, over-paid, their actions lose stockholder value and yet are still paid the same as when the corporation did well; is that a group of the CEO's allies determines the CEO's salary, and not an impartial algorithm (also known as a law).

Who are shareholders?  There are two kinds, Shareholders who own stock shares in the corporation and who are compensated or credited for value above the purchase price of the share, and SHAREHOLDERS, who decide what the corporation is or is not going to do.  This latter group consists of the corporation's Board of Directors, and others who have influence funds which own stock in the names of investors who use the stock as money-making machines.  But this group is miniscule compared to the thousands or millions of other individual owners of the corporation's stock.

Since the corporation, to the stockholders is a money-making machine, the priority of the corporation is to make money for the stockholders.  Any condition that threatens the profitability of the corporation is a condition that threatens the well-being of the share holders. That is why a corporation can act against the interests of the majority of share-holders because the share-holders requires the corporation in this way to improve the condition of the stockholders.  

In other words, when employees participate in an investment fund whose holding include shares in the employees' corporation, those employees vote to require themselves to be exploited working off the book, or not being paid, or pressured or intimidated by management or other ways to increase their productivity.