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Comment by bostonpete | Hacker News Reader

> I now have an excellent example to share in the future

Your comment intuitively seems correct, and I'm inclined to agree with you. But I can't help but wonder if you just end up picking examples that support this claim. Most examples of corporate wrong-doing probably can't be correlated with traits of their CEO (they're just mistakes made by inept, or possibly malicious, individuals or groups).

Statistically, some percentage of corporate wrong-doing will correlate to some event in the CEO's past. I'm not sure that necessarily means that we can point to those cases as proof that a fish rots from the head.

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Saying that the "head" has to be the CEO is taking it too far.

In most large companies, you are only aware of the behaviour of the two levels of management above you. If you see your boss or your bosses boss behave in a certain way, you will think that this behaviour is acceptable.

For example, the CEO of some bank might be very long-term, risk free, investement oriented, but if the boss of the trading desk only cares about the next paycheck and is willing to take risks to get his bonus, chances are all the traders will do whatever it takes to get good results without more than a year ahead.

That actually seems counter-intuitive, to me.

I work in a company of about 140k people and I'm far more aware of the CEO than I am my boss or his boss. I don't even know who my boss' boss is or what he does, but I hear about the CEO on a regular basis (beyond just showing up in movies). It seems to me that in a large company, you're aware of your boss and the figureheads and everywhere in-between those two levels are given the gift of obfuscation.

I can't help myself trying to figure out what 140K-employee company has a moviestar CEO. Nevermind.

Oracle.

The personality of the CEO trickles down to the rest of the organization. His VPs take his philosophy to their subordinates, and so on and so forth. Not only that, but the CEO's policy decisions directly affect the culture of an organization.

It seems to me that organizations tend to take on the personality of the strongest person in the chain. EVERY large company has one or two rogue units inside of it that behave very differently (usually for the better) than the overall culture. In each case I've dealt with, there has been a leader who had a tremendously strong personality that drowned out everything above him.

Most of the time, however, middle management tends to reflect and pass-on the tone and traits that the CEO presents just as you say.

It's really an interesting dynamic.

Recursively applying the "pay attention to the two levels above you" rule gets us to "the CEO sets the corporate culture."

Most examples of corporate wrong-doing probably can't be correlated with traits of their CEO (they're just mistakes made by inept, or possibly malicious, individuals or groups).

Nobody expects the CEO to be an angel. What's important is how the CEO reacts when someone under him screws up at the expense of customers, stockholders, or both.

Case in point, the Sony rootkit fiasco. Products go out the door with Sony's name on them, equipped with a 'feature' that would get any of us little people hauled before a judge on criminal charges. Response from the executive suite? Promote the manager responsible to President of the Global Digital Business division. Fast forward a few years, and consumers are still wandering around with confused, vaguely hurt looks on their faces, wondering why they never seem to get a square deal from Sony.

Same situation with Facebook: can a leopard change his spots?

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