Quarterly Essay 10 Bad Company

In Bad Company, Gideon Haigh scrutinises the way we have turned CEOs into tin gods. Is moral outrage the appropriate response to the collapses of Enron or HIH or are we all implicated in a crazy system? Haigh argues that the attempt to create great entrepreneurs of the new caste of CEOs by giving them shares is doomed to failure and inherently absurd. In a tough-minded, vigorous demolition job on the culture that produced the cult of the CEO, Haigh writes a mini-history of business and shows how the classic traditions of capitalism are mocked by the managerialism of the present.

“The world where the CEO is deemed to be a ‘genius’ at least equal to a great actor or a great sportsman is a world in which ... Gideon Haigh refuses to believe.” —Peter Craven, Introduction

“The making of the modern CEO has been a story of more: more power, more discretion, more ownership, more money, more demands, more expectations and, above all, more illusions. More, as so often, has brought less ...” —Gideon Haigh, Bad Company