The Shackled Boss

Two decades ago bosses were relatively unbound. American chief executives struck heroic poses on the covers of Forbes and Fortune and appointed pliable cronies to their boards. Europeans such as Percy Barnevik, the boss of ASEA Brown Boveri, a Swedish-Swiss conglomerate, imported the American cult of the CEO to the old continent. But since then a succession of catastrophes—most notably the implosion of Enron in 2001 and the financial crisis in 2007-08—have empowered the critics of over-mighty bosses. In 2010 two legal academics, Marcel Kahan and Edward Rock, published a seminal article on “Embattled CEOs”. Since then they have become ever more embattled.