CEO Compensation, response to question

Are the CEO’s to blame for failure of corporate giants? From a shareholder's perspective, I think I would be willing to lower CEO pay. Do you think if CEO's were paid less, then the quality of management would decline?

There is no way that CEO's cannot be held responsible for corporate failures, they are at the helm of the ship correct? Therefore the success of that ships' voyage lays heavily on their shoulders, and pleading ignorance is well... ignorant because a responsible leader should be aware of the actions taken by their subordinates on behalf of the organization. I am not sure if the actual gross salary amount can be stated as the problem, I think it is the difference between the salary for the lowest paid employee and the CEO. If you look at the gap between the two and how it has increased exponentially relative to a corporations' profits over the last century, I considered this is a glaring statistic. Also, there seems to be a sense of entitlement to a CEO, as if one who achieves such a title is owed a certain amount of money regardless of performance success, which just seems contrary to good business. Is there possibly a sense that there is nothing left to accomplish once you achieve that CEO chair? So one just shuts all that ambition off? You hear about all these CEO's who come on board with a corporation, get huge signing bonuses or guarantees, then spend two or three years sinking earnings, they bow out gracefully usually, and move to another company and repeat their actions. Only example I can think of is the woman who took over HP, a highly touted choice for CEO, a "ball buster" etc., that was paid large sums of money to run a company for maybe five years with no success. As a shareholder I would be willing to pay those high salaries if the individual were worth it, and the compensation was somehow performance based. If CEO's were paid less it would not necessarily guarantee better success rates for corporations, and I think lower pay would lead to lower management quality. However, if compensation were structured more like Steve Jobs' (his salary is one dollar, but he gets a percentage of annual profits or of stock value increases) forcing a CEO to take ownership of his performance we may see higher success rates in corporate giants. The huge crux of it all is the ethics of the CEO and the individuals within the corporation. The "win never lose" mentality of most business people leads to poor ethical choices and everyone employees, executives, and investors, all lose in the end. The real key is choosing an individual for the CEO position that is truly committed to the success of the organization and it's mission statement.