It Ain’t Easy Being the Boss

Article highlighting some of the trials and tribulations of being the "Big Boss" in the corporate world in Newsweek caught my attention. What I found especially interesting is the expectations placed on these new company heads:

According to an annual Booz Allen Hamilton study on CEO turnover published in May, boards are "quicker than ever to replace underperforming CEOs." When the study was originally published in 1995, one in eight chiefs were forced out of office. In 2006, nearly one in three left involuntarily.

So why has chief-executive tenure become so tenuous? Since the Enron and WorldCom fiascos, holding the heads of public companies accountable sooner rather than later is a matter of protecting public interest, says Bernard Anderson, professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "Executives are being held to a much higher standard of accountability and transparency," says Anderson, alluding to the stricter corporate governance regulations imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.