814
n
Gods and villains
badly they blamed external circumstances. Yet, when assessing
their colleagues’ performance, the bias ipped! When other
executives’ rms performed well, the managers said “it’s due to
some external circumstances” while when their colleagues’ rms
were underperforming, they attributed it to these persons’ errors!
This behavior had not been documented before among humans.
So I guess we can either conclude from this that managers are
borderline human, or perhaps that they ae even more human
than the rest of us . . . Take your pick.
“Over the hill and far away, top managers are here
to stay”
The gap between being a hero and villain is sometimes scarily
small. And, for a CEO, it is easy to nd yourself being thrown
from left to right, but making your way back is a sheer impos-
sibility. When your board nally boots you out due to the
company’s persistent poor performance, that might be it for you;
your reputation is tarnished and you will nd your boardroom
employability has reached that of an alcoholic applying for a job
at a liquor store. Firm performance is obviously a big inuence
on when top executives leave, even when the press release tries
to paint a different picture. Top managers often pass the baton,
and move on to “seek other challenges” simply because they are
forced to do so by their boards.
Yet, poor performance appears not to be the only cause for
premature departure. Academic research on American execu-
tives – by, among others, Professors Wagner, Pfeffer, and O’Reilly
– has shown that top managers are not only leaving when the
performance of their companies is rock bottom (undoubtedly
with a good poke by their board if not a kick in the backside) but
also when rm performance is relatively high. Wagner specu-
lated that this happens because then they’re hot stuff on the job
market and able to nd themselves a nice new green pasture.
Now, although this will hardly be anyone (else)’s idea of “fun”,
it so happened I had a database available on a couple of hundred
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