Any level of management with a direct responsibility is where blame should lie.
If the organization is so big that the CEO believes that, it shouldn't matter. They should be ultimately responsible for the entire organization. No one forced the company to be that big and no one made them take the job.
Imagine some local wallmart having an issue with something (eg. a bunch of expired chemicals, that have to be disposed as dengerous), and they don't want to deal with that in a proper way, and some local manager tells some local worker, to just dump the chemicals into a stream behind the wallmart. Usually noone notices stuff like that, if the chemicals are not "too bad" (=fish die), the worker will lose his/her job if (s)he doesn't do it, and the manager will get someone else to do it. If the worker reports it, it's his word against the managers, the manager will just say it was leaked rainwater, and that they asked the worker to spill it in the gutter, so the worker has no real choice, if they want to feed the kids that night. People above the manager have no idea about that local wallmart, and that one time issue.
Then, the worker dumps the chemicals into the stream, the chemicals just happen to be very dangerous, and a million fish die in the river downstream. Is the CEO really the guilty on here? Did he really know?
On the other hand, you have the VW dieselgate, where a whole team had to work on the software, and atleast a few level of mangers had to have known about the issue. But on the corporate ladder, where every level is squeezing the level below it to "do more", "bring in more profits", it's possible that some manager in charge of something actually didn't tell the people above him, just how exactly he solved the exhaust issue, just that he solved it, and saved millions of euros (and got a huge bonus). On the other hand, coordinating a big team of coders, and such info not getting to higher ups or to members of different teams in the same company (with different managers) is probably unlikely.
What i'm trying to say is, that blaming the CEO by default is bad, because in the first case, it's unrealistic to expect the CEO to even know that that local walmart exists.... and in the second case, that there should be a very thourough investigation just how high the knowledge went, and have the whole chain of comand held responsible.
Maybe, just maybe we then should not have so large entities that nobody can be responsible for? Limited liability is a massive handout from society to the owners of the Limited liability company and should be priced accordingly. (I do not propose banning limited liability. I propose being more selective how and which operations actually deserve limited liability. And tax it appropriately.)
The whole theory behind paying CEOs their current absurd salaries is that they are 5-D chess geniuses, responsible for the value created by up to millions of people doing actual work.
How can a CEO be in control enough to deserve all of the profits but so out of control that they deserve none of the blame?
The practical outcome is that high-level executives create plausible deniability. In your story, they issue edicts like "our chemical disposal bill is too high! Fix it!" or just "Our per-store costs are too high!" and ride roughshod over objections. "Don't bring me problems! Solve them!" The pressure rolls downhill. People trying to do the right thing get yelled at or fired; people doing the wrong thing skate on by, because the metrics look better. So everybody learns to do what the CEO implicitly wants: cutting corners to increase profits.
If the CEOs don't know that's the natural outcome of their behavior then they're negligent or criminally incompetent. If they do, they're just criminals. But they have plenty of money to create enough deniability that they can walk away. Possibly using some lower subordinate as a scapegoat, when he was just responding to incentives that the CEO set up.
In my view, whether or not a CEO has direct knowledge of a direct crime is irrelevant. At the CEO level, they don't have direct knowledge of anything, but they have power over everything. It's not clear to me positions like that should exist, but as long as they do exist, they should be responsible for the whole system that they have so eagerly taken charge of. Ignorance cannot be an excuse.
Thus this specific act was the result of an employee failing to follow procedure, despite being given the training and time to do so.
This is the exact burden of proof that is used for health and safety. When an employee is seriously injured, there’s a burden on the employer to demonstrate that took all reasonable precautions to prevent the injury. That mean procedures, training and evidence that those procedures and training is followed, enforced and enough time and space to provided for employees to follow them.
This should exist through the entire chain of command, with each level ensuring that the level below isn’t cutting corners, and it part of a CEO responsibility to build that management framework. I mean it already exists for controlling costs and ensure health & safety in most successful companies, why can’t it exist for all legal and social obligations?
but what is "them" in this case. You are talking about the corporation, but does this mean CEOs, managers, or some combination of the two?
I'm not sure I'm arguing along those lines at all. What I'm saying is most CEOs are far removed from anything direct, but I'm not sure how that translates to "and therefore no one is".
> They should be ultimately responsible for the entire organization
I disagree. You don't really argue why, and I argue, at least, that it's not at all practically. Best case it leads to scapegoating the CEO for things they aren't best positioned to control, and/or executive-levels micromanaging lower levels for fear of liability.
Funny then how the CEO is the right level to take that high pay, which is generally defended as compensation for the ultimate responsibility.
Either the CEO is responsible for what happens under his reign, or he isn't. If he is, why shouldn't he shoulder the blame for the bad parts; if he isn't, why should he be paid for the good parts?
