• Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    And so who are the “owners” then in this context? It’s a public company. So you mean the shareholders.

    Who is responsible for directing a company? Who is responsible for their performance and integrity? Is it the shareholders? Or is it someone else?

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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      22 days ago

      Yes, the shareholders.

      Shareholders chose the supervisory board and dictate the general direction, differs a lot but at least profit goals (short and long term).

      CEOs that don’t perform, or leave low hanging fruit, or won’t do what others are willing to do just get replaced.

      Shareholders have all the power to give CEOs different goals - eg a number of people covered or don’t anything non-monetary.
      At the very least if CEOs wouldn’t be incentivized by company profits things would be better.

      • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Right so in other words CEOs have responsibility that they need to live up to.

        They can’t just pass all their responsibility onto shareholders and absolve themselves of duty. They can’t hide behind the covers and point blame.

        • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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          22 days ago

          Yes, exactly.

          I don’t think I said anything provocative or not common knowledge.

          The CEOs responsibilities are specified by shareholders - more exactly via bylaws, general meetings, usually annual, and supervisory board supervision, usually monthly or quarterly.

          Eg: If a CEO decides on their own they they will refuse to pay any cancer treatments that can get him removed. Or even if they decide to cover all cancer treatments. The latter being my point more exactly bcs that would lower profits ofc. CEOs have to justify their decisions and affects on company statements much like regular employees, but on a company level. CEOs get fired for the stupidest reasons, but in any case it’s usually easier to just pay them out so there are no legal processings (that is bad especially in publicly traded companies).

          I don’t understand why would they

          pass all their responsibility onto shareholders and absolve themselves of duty

          Thats the whole job they got from and agreed to do (passing it back just means quitting, which they can do). “Their boss” tells them what to do.
          (If you get the job to operate the ice cream machine then thats your “responsibility”, you can’t put it back on your boss unless by quitting, which means it’s nobodies responsibility until the next worker is assigned.)