The Biggest CEO Screwups of 2011

By Susan Adams
Forbes via readerssupportednews.org
December 26, 2011

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2011/12/22/the-biggest-ceo-screw-ups-of-2011/

A man-made disaster triggered the worst of last year's Forbes
CEO screwups list, when BP chief Tony Hayward committed a
series of public gaffes in the wake of the April 2010 Gulf
oil spill, and then resigned the following October. This
year, forces of nature created the backdrop for the boss
behavior we deem the worst: Masataka Shimizu, head of the
Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as Tepco, largely disappeared
from public view after the devastating March 11 earthquake
and tsunami set off the worst radiation release since
Chernobyl. Subsequently, reports surfaced that senior Tepco
engineers had known for years that five of the company's ten
nuclear reactors in Fukushima prefecture had a dangerous
design flaw. But the company failed to make upgrades, dooming
the reactors to a series of meltdowns and explosions when the
45-foot tsunami hit. Following the disaster, Shimizu made few
public appearances, checking himself into a hospital for a
week. He resigned in May.

To put together our list, we consulted two professors at
Kellogg School of Management, Daniel Diermeier and Harry
Kraemer; Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey
Sonnenfeld; a list provided by Sydney Finkelstein, who
teaches management at the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth; and Richard Levick, who runs Levick Strategic
Communications, a crisis communications firm in Washington,
D.C.


To read more, go to 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2011/12/22/the-biggest-ceo-screw-ups-of-2011/

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate