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Leadership

CEOs Are More Optimistic about the Economy Than the Rest of Us, and They’re Probably Right

At Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s Yale CEO Caucus last week, the vast majority of the business leaders in attendance said they expect a soft landing. Sonnenfeld and co-author Steven Tian write that the economic indicators back up the CEOs.

A "Now Hiring" sign in the window of a mall clothing store
  • How do you manage a global financial crisis?

    When hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management plummeted toward bankruptcy in September 1998, its potential dissolution threatened the financial markets with disaster. Herb Allison, then the president of Merrill Lynch, was one of the few people in a position to avert a crash landing, but first he had to get a cranky coalition of competitive bankers and traders lined up behind his bailout plan.

  • Should business be personal?

    How can managers integrate their values into business decisions? Trish Karter '82 talks about the decision to keep her company's headquarters in inner-city Boston, and how it grew from her sense of self.

  • A company in good standing?

    Could the market do more to improve ethical performance than professionalization? Professor Jim Baron proposes that voluntary certification of various facets of corporate responsibility could create a market for good behavior.

  • What can a professional association accomplish?

    Venture capitalists seed companies that are not yet a gleam in the public market's eye. Their investments can sprout and transform industries. Anne Glover '78, a past chairman of the British Venture Capital Association, says a professional association helps the industry self-police.

  • The chief professional?

    With their power, their prominence, and their pay packages, CEOs are cynosures in the business universe. Could the structures of a management profession take in these corporate chiefs? Or should CEOs of publicly traded companies be treated as members of a separate profession, with its own rules and responsibilities?

  • Who were the managers?

    While technologies and social structures change through the ages, the basic need for efficient and skillful management of resources and organizations is a constant. An archaeologist and a historian describe how past societies have met the challenge of training effective and accountable managers.