Michael B. Dorff wrote a book about this called "Indispensable and Other Myths": http://blog.translusion.com/posts/CEO%20Salaries/ http://blog.translusion.com/p

Michael B. Dorff wrote a book about this called "Indispensable and Other Myths": http://blog.translusion.com/posts/CEO%20Salaries/ http://blog.translusion.com/posts/CEO%20Salaries/ His conclusions were that CEOs don't really matter all that much. Exceptional ones like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs are quite rare.