He had a lot more control over Apple than I suspect most CEOs have over their companies. How many CEOs wanted to do things but were stymied by executives or by boards?
And yes, Ben & Jerry's had to drop the 7x policy when they hired a full-time CEO who wasn't them. Another interesting thing about the company -- when they first went public, they sold stock only to Vermont residents. (I've actually been to the original Ben & Jerry's, in an old gas station, because I was dating a Vermonter at the time. Unfortunately it's now a parking lot.)
@Ron Ah the gap that exists between what should be and what is abetted by cronyism in the "old boy network." It's at play in government as well as corporations.
The board is supposed to act as a check against the CEO to make sure he or she is acting in the best interests of the company, but as you say, in reality, it really is an old-boy network (quite literally).
As for shareholder uprisings, strong shareholders do make themselves heard. Just look at the Yahoo situation for an example, but you're right not as often they should or could.
@Ron aren't the key board members usually hand-in-glove with the people holding the top positions in the company? Many companies can obscure much of what goes wrong internally. As for shareholders putting their foot down, I don't know if that ever happens outside of happy ending movies like The Solid Gold Cadilac.
Regardless, the job of any CEO at a publicly traded company is to protect and grow the company stock price.
@Ron, I think stock price is not always the best way to measure the performance of the CEO. I have seen many instances(Ex : Satyam computers) where CEO's artificially inflate the stock prices. So I believe job of the CEO is to grow the value/brand of the company rather than grow the stock price.
I think it's fairly standard practice for the CEO of a company undergoing bankrupcy processes to STILL pay its CEO quite handsomely -- even when the company is bankrupt. That's crazy, but it's how the system works sometimes.
@mhhfive, true system works like that. I think government needs to create a body which keeps track of the CEO's pay vs Companies growth to protect the interest of investor. This body should flag/take action on those companies which are paying higher salaries to its CEO's inspite of poor company performance.
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
