Dating Lives of CEOs Affect Company Performance

Bangalore: Nikolai Roussanov and Pavel Savor, co-authors of “Status, Marriage and Managers' Attitudes to Risk”, say that single individuals take more risks to increase “spouse quality.” They also continue with that while dating, the CEO’s don’t think much, but when it comes to finding a suitable spouse they become a little choosy and they mostly prefer the lady with relative position.

In a research done by the authors Roussanov and pavel it was found out that almost 20 percent of the companies had single CEO’s. Roussanov gives an example of Larry Ellison of Oracle (ORCL) and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). Where he says that Ellison has been single many times in his life and so he has been able to make large acquisitions in his career whereas, Ballmer has been married and has also been criticized for not spending the company’s large hoarded cash.

Sometimes the dating fun of the CEO’s can get them into trouble like it happened with Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett Packard’s company, was asked to leave since he violated the company’s expected standards of conduct. Cathie Lesjack who was appointed as CEO to replace Hurd for the time being, asked the employees to remain focused and she disclosed that, ‘Mark had failed to disclose a close personal relationship he had with the contractor that constituted a conflict of interest, failed to maintain accurate expense reports, and misused company assets.’