You can always be fired for doing a ‘bad’ job, however your employer/shareholder defines bad. The law gives management really broad authority to define “good” a

You can always be fired for doing a ‘bad’ job, however your employer/shareholder defines bad. The law gives management really broad authority to define “good” and “bad,” though typically that’s easiest to measure and quantify through profit. (Especially for shareholders, who have alternative uses for money —- if the shareholder cares about Cause A, he has less to give to it if his investment underperforms.) You can’t intentionally waste assets, you can’t put personal interests above the company’s interests, and there’s another set of rules when you sell the company — but “prioritizing profit” is an economic argument about what’s good and best, not quite so much a legal standard.