Corporate CEOs are headline news. Stock prices rise and fall at word of their hiring and firing. Business media debate their merits and defects as if individual leaders determined the health of the economy. Yet we know surprisingly little about how CEOs are selected and dismissed or about their true power. This is the first book to take us into the often secretive world of the CEO selection process. Rakesh Khurana's findings are surprising and disturbing. In recent years, he shows, corporations have increasingly sought CEOs who are above all else charismatic, whose fame and force of personality impress analysts and the business media, but whose experience and abilities are not necessarily right for companies' specific needs. The labor market for CEOs, Khurana concludes, is far less rational than we might think. Khurana's findings are based on a study of the hiring and firing of CEOs at over 850 of America's largest companies and on extensive interviews with CEOs, corporate board members, and consultants at executive search firms. Written with exceptional clarity and verve, the book explains the basic mechanics of the selection process and how hiring priorities have changed with the rise of shareholder activism. Khurana argues that the market for CEOs, which we often assume runs on cool calculation and the impersonal forces of supply and demand, is culturally determined and too frequently inefficient. Its emphasis on charisma artificially limits the number of candidates considered, giving them extraordinary leverage to demand high salaries and power. It also raises expectations and increases the chance that a CEO will be fired for failing to meet shareholders' hopes. The result is corporate instability and too little attention to long-term strategy. The book is a major contribution to our understanding of corporate culture and the nature of markets and leadership in general.

Features two 8-page b/w photo inserts. An exploration of the phenomenal world of America's chief executives where money is king and they are the knights of the round table. Based on solid research and interviews with key players, Flanagan exposes the exorbitant salaries, perks and benefits the top CEOs have amassed. He documents, among other things, how expensive, inefficient and potentially deadly stock options are, and shows how they allow the CEO to become unimaginably wealthy while diluting the value of shares owned by other stockholders.

The company is under-performing, its share price is trailing, and the CEO gets...a multi-million-dollar raise. This story is familiar, for good reason: as this book clearly demonstrates, structural flaws in corporate governance have produced widespread distortions in executive pay. Pay without Performance presents a disconcerting portrait of managers' influence over their own pay--and of a governance system that must fundamentally change if firms are to be managed in the interest of shareholders. Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried demonstrate that corporate boards have persistently failed to negotiate at arm's length with the executives they are meant to oversee. They give a richly detailed account of how pay practices--from option plans to retirement benefits--have decoupled compensation from performance and have camouflaged both the amount and performance-insensitivity of pay. Executives' unwonted influence over their compensation has hurt shareholders by increasing pay levels and, even more importantly, by leading to practices that dilute and distort managers' incentives. This book identifies basic problems with our current reliance on boards as guardians of shareholder interests. And the solution, the authors argue, is not merely to make these boards more independent of executives as recent reforms attempt to do. Rather, boards should also be made more dependent on shareholders by eliminating the arrangements that entrench directors and insulate them from their shareholders. A powerful critique of executive compensation and corporate governance, Pay without Performance points the way to restoring corporate integrity and improving corporate performance.

At 14 years of age, author Douglas Barry started wondering what to do with his life. That's when this precocious teenager began writing to CEOs of major companies to seek their advice on how to reach the top of the career ladder. The honest, heartfelt replies on finding success in the business world, from the CEOs of Eastman Kodak, McDonald's, Intel, Sprint, UPS, Viacom, and many other companies, provide inspiring life lessons for everyone. Wisdom for a Young CEO includes pithy tidbits, longer essays, sidebars, tips, quotes, and reminiscences from more than 100 of the country's business leaders, focusing on such character issues as honesty, hard work, being true to oneself, integrity, leadership, and interpersonal skills. In surprising detail, many describe turning points in their own careers, outlining difficult moral and ethical decisions they've faced. Douglas Barry is sure to garner publicity from widespread media.

How is Saddam Hussein like Tony Blair? Or Kenneth Lay like Lou Gerstner? Answer: They are, or were, leaders. Many would argue that tyrants, corrupt CEOs, and other abusers of power and authority are not leaders at all--at least not as the word is currently used. But, according to Barbara Kellerman, this assumption is dangerously naive. A provocative departure from conventional thinking, Bad Leadership compels us to see leadership in its entirety. Kellerman argues that the dark side of leadership--from rigidity and callousness to corruption and cruelty--is not an aberration. Rather, bad leadership is as ubiquitous as it is insidious--and so must be more carefully examined and better understood. Drawing on high-profile, contemporary examples--from Mary Meeker to David Koresh, Bill Clinton to Radovan Karadzic, Al Dunlap to Leona Helmsley--Kellerman explores seven primary types of bad leadership and dissects why and how leaders cross the line from good to bad. The book also illuminates the critical role of followers, revealing how they collaborate with, and sometimes even cause, bad leadership. Daring and counterintuitive, Bad Leadership makes clear that we need to face the dark side to become better leaders and followers ourselves. Barbara Kellerman is research director of the Center for Public Leadership and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

You’re only a startup CEO once. Do it well with Startup CEO, a "master class in building a business." —Dick Costolo, Former CEO, Twitter Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it’s difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you’re likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don’t have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees. Startup CEO is not a memoir of Return Path's 20-year journey but a thoughtful CEO-focused book that provides first-time CEOs with advice, tools, and approaches for the situations that startup CEOs will face. You'll learn: How to tell your story to new hires, investors, and customers for greater alignment How to create a values-based culture for speed and engagement How to create business and personal operating systems so that you can balance your life and grow your company at the same time How to develop, lead, and leverage your board of directors for greater impact How to ensure that your company is bought, not sold, when you exit Startup CEO is the field guide every CEO needs throughout the growth of their company.

This report, based on The Conference Board's CEO Challenge 2004 Survey project, presents the findings of in-depth interviews with 11 CEOs from multinational companies, along with data and analysis of survey respondents, top priorities.

The New CEOs looks at the women and people of color leading Fortune 500 companies, exploring the factors that have helped them achieve success and their impact on the business world and society more broadly. As recently as fifteen years ago, there had only been three women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and no African Americans. By now there have been more than 100 women, African American, Latino, and Asian-American CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff look at these “new CEOs” closely. Weaving compelling interview excerpts with new research, the book traces how these new CEOs came to power, questions whether they differ from white male Fortune 500 CEOs in meaningful ways, asks whether the companies that hired them differ from other companies, and discusses what we can learn about power in America from the emergence of these new CEOs. As Americans continue to debate corporate compensation, glass ceilings, and colorblind relationships, The New CEOs shares information critical to understanding our current situation and looks toward the future in our increasingly globalized world. The paperback edition of The New CEOs features a new Introduction and an updated comprehensive list of new CEOs to date.