You may be referring to William Whyte’s book City. It describes how reducing a CEO’s commute is one of the major factors in the corporate relocations he studied

You may be referring to William Whyte’s book City. It describes how reducing a CEO’s commute is one of the major factors in the corporate relocations he studied[1]. Joel Spolsky also wrote about this 15 years ago: > “My company, Fog Creek Software, is relocating. There’s nothing wrong with the brownstone we’re in, it’s just a tiringly long commute. Basically, we’re moving because of William Whyte‘s rule: virtually all corporate relocations involve a move to a location which is closer to the CEO’s home than the old location. Whyte discovered this principle after an extensive study of Fortune 500 companies that left New York City for the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s. They always had big, complicated Relocation Committees which carefully studied all the options and chose, coincidentally I’m sure, to move to within half a mile of the CEO’s home in Danbury, Connecticut. Whyte also showed that these companies all tanked after the relocation. With, I believe, but one exception, companies that left New York City to be closer to the CEO’s house in Connecticut or Westchester had dismal stock performance compared to companies that stayed in Manhattan.”[2] 1-https://books.google.ca/books?id=_h4eF9H9UtQC&pg=PA93&dq=%22average+distance+from+the+ceo%27s+home:+eight+miles%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DGfEUan6Ma-24AOumoDgDg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22average%20distance%20from%20the%20ceo's%20home%3A%20eight%20miles%22&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=_h4eF9H9UtQC&pg=PA93&dq=%22... 2- https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/28/finding-an-office-in-new-york-city/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/28/finding-an-office-...