I feel like a lot of comments here equate a CEO with the owners.
CEOs chose to be the guard dogs & executioners doing bad shit.
While I'm not saying that would even change any of the comments, I do wanna add the context that basically anyone can be CEO, it's really one of the more replaceable jobs. The elite hire guys like this to to be the face for figurative and literal bullets, and compensate them well for that.
Shareholders chose the supervisory board and dictate the general direction, differs a lot but at least profit goals (short and long term).
CEOs that don't perform, or leave low hanging fruit, or won't do what others are willing to do just get replaced.
Shareholders have all the power to give CEOs different goals - eg a number of people covered or don't anything non-monetary.
At the very least if CEOs wouldn't be incentivized by company profits things would be better.
I don't think I said anything provocative or not common knowledge.
The CEOs responsibilities are specified by shareholders - more exactly via bylaws, general meetings, usually annual, and supervisory board supervision, usually monthly or quarterly.
Eg: If a CEO decides on their own they they will refuse to pay any cancer treatments that can get him removed. Or even if they decide to cover all cancer treatments. The latter being my point more exactly bcs that would lower profits ofc. CEOs have to justify their decisions and affects on company statements much like regular employees, but on a company level. CEOs get fired for the stupidest reasons, but in any case it's usually easier to just pay them out so there are no legal processings (that is bad especially in publicly traded companies).
I don't understand why would they
pass all their responsibility onto shareholders and absolve themselves of duty
Thats the whole job they got from and agreed to do (passing it back just means quitting, which they can do). "Their boss" tells them what to do.
(If you get the job to operate the ice cream machine then thats your "responsibility", you can't put it back on your boss unless by quitting, which means it's nobodies responsibility until the next worker is assigned.)