You're fired; Ousting a CEO isn't easy, and boards are historically slow to do it.(Focus: Corporate Boards)(Chief executive officer)

Crain's Chicago Business, June, 2005 by Levine, Daniel Rome

Byline: DANIEL ROME LEVINE There are few tasks that corporate directors find more unpleasant than showing a chief executive the door. Among old-guard companies, pushing out the CEO can be especially awkward. It may mean firing someone on Friday with whom you had planned to play golf on Sunday.

In many cases, the CEOs themselves recruited the directors, and still sit on other boards with them. This is one of the reasons boards historically have been slow to pull the trigger and fire poorly performing CEOs, according to David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, who has studied compensation arrangements of departed Fortune 500 CEOs. "If you were to take action against one of the members of the circle you might...

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