His ship either sinks or it flourishes. However, today a CEO is only responsible for himself and to the stockholders. He can be completely negligible, causing a company to go belly up, and still walk away with a cool trillion in his pocket.
This is one of the biggest contributing factors to the change in the workforce. "For most of the 20th century, it was common for an individual to work for only one company during an entire career" (Carlson, 2002, pg. 42). However, in today's workforce employees are forced with not having any loyalty to a company. They fear that any day they could be "Laid Off" due to downsizing, or bankruptcy of the company. It happens all the time as if it were the natural phases of any company. It happened to Cecilia Mikla when her CEO, "on whose watch the telecom equipment giant [Lucent Technologies] lost more than 70% of its market value," ran her company aground (Gill, 2001). Her CEO then "bagged a one-time payment of $5.5 million when the board ousted him" (Gill, 2001). .
Does a CEO do any more for the company than other employees? No. However, if any other employee were to be fired or dismissed there would be no severance pay for them. CEOs should be treated with the same outcome. Recently, CEO's compensations have started to be held more closely to a company's performance. According to the findings of Eric Wahlgren, "The bulk of executive compensation -- 70% to 80% -- now comes in stock options" (2002). Now let us get rid of those severance packages to hold them completely accountable.
This is just an example of good business gone badly. With the changes in the workplace, there are certain key factors that need to be addressed when placing people in the positions of Senior Management Staff, and CEO. .
The work place is changing at a highly accelerated rate. Management needs to re-evaluate the way they communicate and operate with the new workforce.