The responsibilities of an organization's CEO (Chief Executive Officer, US) or MD (Managing Director, UK) are set by the organization's board of directors or other authority, depending on the organization's legal structure. They can be far-reaching or quite limited and are typically enshrined in a formal delegation of authority.
[*]Typical duties of boards of directors include:
governing the organization by establishing broad policies and objectives;
selecting, appointing, supporting and reviewing the performance of the chief executive;
ensuring the availability of adequate financial resources;
approving annual budgets;
accounting to the stakeholders for the organization's performance;
setting the salaries and compensation of company management.
Often, the board will meet annually or semi-annually to perform duties, especially in the case of large corporations, after which their responsibility with the company ends until the next meeting.
Typically, the CEO/MD has responsibilities as a communicator, decision maker, leader, manager and executor. The communicator role can involve the press and the rest of the outside world, as well as the organization's management and employees; the decision-making role involves high-level decisions about policy and strategy. As a leader, the CEO/MD advises the board of directors, motivates employees, and drives change within the organization. As a manager, the CEO/MD presides over the organization's day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year operations.
CEOs do have a job; it's true that they don't do nothing. However, it's also true that although their decisions are numerous and important, within the infrastructure built by large corporations, it is arguably both less strenuous
and less time consuming
on average than many, if not all, other positions in the company, from the ground up.
I think the issue being argued here isn't "they shouldn't be paid" or "they shouldn't be paid
well," but rather that it's unacceptable to make the argument "pay raises are bad because CEOs will often elect to fire large numbers of people rather than use company profits or merely refrain from paying themselves extra, and that is okay" with the implication being, "the CEO's
extra profit on top of already substantial pay is more important than the ability of necessary workers to support themselves on pay that rarely or never improves no matter how difficult work is or how long they work." Many companies only offer raises after several years, to extremely select and limited numbers of employees, and when raises are offered, they're generally 10, 25 or 50 cent raises, at least in my area.
Corporations are not soulless, they are selfish; that's simply how they work. It is human nature not to be satisfied no matter how good life is or how much one already has, especially materially. If I made one million dollars last year, this year I feel I should make two, and because I have the ability to take that cheddar with little to no meaningful negative reaction, I will. CEOs and other business executives are not out to explicitly be "evil," but they also have very little pity, empathy or general understanding or care for the situation their workers are in, by virtue of their position in life and the socialization that goes with it. We are also often trained to think that no matter what, if you're getting less of something than you want, you're being "punished." If I got an extra piece of cake yesterday, but don't get one today, I will feel like I am being punished and retaliate, because now my circumstances seem lesser by comparison. Many politicians, executives and other people in positions of power feel extremely justified when they say that they feel low wage workers are deserving of poor status, or that it is immoral to disapprove of them taking extra cheddar in the form of unnecessary bonuses
on top of enormous raises and high pay grade checks, while at the same time bitching that they don't have enough workers or that the economy is in ruins without jobs. That's just how it is. That's how humans work.
However, "that's just how it is" is absolutely not a logical, objective or acceptable excuse for allowing or working against attempts to counter situations like that, and often only makes the problem worse. One doesn't need to reward bad behavior to encourage it because bad behavior is only undertaken when there is an intrinsic reward anyway; just not punishing self-rewarding bad behavior is enough to encourage it, and in this case, the bad behavior is a deeply ingrained mental and social standpoint that harms and limits many rather than a specific action that harms a few.
