Size and shape

Abstract

If a company’s management system is a hierarchy with an omnipotent CEO at the top, and if the CEO’s pay depends in part on the size of the company, it should come as no surprise if the company grows like Topsy. Nor should it be surprising if acquisitions loom large in the company’s growth strategy; or that the company tends to pay over the odds for them; or that in due course, as the economies of the world became increasingly integrated, CEOs begin to talk about their “global strategies.”