The redundant CEO

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The redundant CEO

Filed under: Corporations

By: B, S. E.

A common excuse by which the crème de la crème of CEOs and successful entrepreneurs attempt to justify their extreme affluence is through taking credit for the success of "their" enterprises. A CEO or the founder of a company taking credit the company's success, however, is a fallacy. A large corporation, such as AT%26T or ExxonMobil, is successful not because of its CEO, but because of thousands of employees and managers. Truth be told, the CEO is no more important to a large corporation's success than any other member of upper management. The same can be said for entrepreneurs. Once a company is established and successful, the entrepreneurs has lost of his or her influence over the corporation and, therefore, can no longer take credit for every single accomplishment of the company he or she once founded. So why do CEOs and entrepreneurs are rewarded as though they were the cause for a given corporations success? That is, do CEOs earn of Fortune 500 companies earn up to 20 as much as other high level executives? Why do the founders of a given corporation continue to be rewarded for the company's every success, even long after they have lost their influence and importance? Because of a small flaw in human nature: the desire for an alpha-person. People love to have someone to praise or scold. They find it comforting to assign human beings to corporations. CEOs and entrepreneurs have successfully exploited this inert human desire in order to convince the public and themselves that they are not over-compensated. Truth is, however, that there is no need for a single alpha-person in most modern corporations. All that is needed is upper-level management. The CEO and the billionaire entrepreneur are all but redundant among the nation's largest corporations, filling a largely ceremonial role. In a way, the CEOs and founders of Fortune 500 corporations are much like royalty; completely unneeded and over-rated.

I am a rational, creative, intelligent and, as you may have thought, liberal person with a passion for politics and the social sciences in general. I am from a progressive professional (upper middle) class background and pride myself in being someone whose actions and opinions are based on rational thought. My political ideology largely rests on three main principles. First, human beings should be as free as possible. Thus, I advocate the