The CEO‟s Managerial Skills, Ups and Downs of a Firm and Crisis

Abstract

We are dealing in this paper with the general issue of management crisis, crisis as inflection and disturbing point for the economic entity. There many causes for the appearance and ongoing of crisis within socio-economic systems. We chose the most important cause: that of the action and decision-making of the outstanding human resource and propeller for the entire activity, the CEO.
Starting from Peter Drucker‟s allegation that the CEO is the power-link between the organization and the business/natural environment, we want to highlight that the plans, the ideas, and intentions of a CEO dedicated and efficient lead to efforts and costs inside the entity and results (bad or good) outside, into society and markets. The CEO is main person to see, to predict, the opportunities for the performance of the company. BUT, the results can be favorable on medium run, or only on short run, involving possible subsequent crisis, consisting on undulating movements of the entity activity.
Specifically, we propose the situation of John Reed, former CEO of Citicorp (then Citigroup), in fact the architect of the complex mega-financial structure which became Citigroup and negative repercussions occurred from factual financial activity of the corporation.