Bad Company: The Cult of the CEO: Quarterly Essay 10

Description

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

Historian, writer and cricket-lover Gideon Haigh has been writing about sport and business for more than 22 years. His best-known books are Mystery Spinner, The Big Ship, The Summer Game, Game for Anything and The Ashes 2005. Gideon Haigh has been a journalist for more than three decades, has contributed to more than a hundred newspapers and magazines, published thirty-two books and edited seven others. The Office- A Hardworking History won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction; On Warne was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature; and Certain Admissions won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for True Crime. His latest book is Stroke of Genius- Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket. Gideon lives in Melbourne with his wife and daughter. Nobody has played more games for his cricket club - nor, perhaps, wanted to.