Rating the Top 10 Crises of 2003
The most striking aspect of last year’s largest corporate crises was the frequency with which they cost the CEOs involved their jobs.

The list of deposed CEOs includes Martha Stewart, Dick Grasso of the New York Stock Exchange, Don Carty of American Airlines, Phil Condit of Boeing, and a host of mutual fund chief executives caught up in the investigation of shady dealing in that industry.

Those looking for evidence that managing corporate reputation is one of the most important tasks for a modern CEO need look no further.

“These crises reinforce the importance of the CEO to an organization’s reputation,” says Thomas Goodwin, president of Step One Communications. “PR practitioners should be every more wary of emerging situations in their organizations that signal a blurring of the interests of the enterprise with the interests of its CEO or leadership.

“In the cases of Freddie Mac, Martha Stewart, the NYSE, Tyco, American Airlines and the mutual funds—and possibly the AARP—the CEO appears to have forgotten forgot who he or she was working for—or allowed others to do so. The resulting adverse publicity and consequences fundamentally altered the infrastructure of each enterprise.”

CEOs have always been held accountable for the way their organizations responded during crisis, of course, but recent changes in technology, in corporate ownership, in transparency, and in societal expectations have made the margin for error incredibly slim—and the pace of retribution unbelievably fast.

Artículo completo en Holmes Report