The Dictator's Handbook would say the CEO is optimizing for survival as CEO. The book was subtitled, "the logic of political survival," and is based on a game t

The Dictator's Handbook would say the CEO is optimizing for survival as CEO. The book was subtitled, "the logic of political survival," and is based on a game theory based model called the predictioneers game. It was written precisely as a more useful quantitative tool to describe these things instead of just moralizing about them. It means this CEO makes decisions that first secure her ability to maintain benefits to the essential people who keep her in that position, second, to prevent influential people from coordinating for leverage themselves to become new essentials she'd be accountable to, and third, maintaining the pipeline funnel of interchangeables to keep those influentials in line. The goal is to reduce the size of the coalition you need to please to maintain the ability to keep making decisions in that role. The moralistic version of this is the Gervais Principle from Ribbonfarm that gets posted here periodically. In that model, instead of Smith and DeMesquita's leader managing coalitions of essentials, influentials, and interchangeables, you have the Gervais psychopath using idiots to manage losers. It's just a different description of the same mechanisms. There is a third related model, which describes how, where to do any good in the world at all, you need the power to do it, and obtaining and sustaining that ability long enough to do the good you intend to becomes %95 of the work, with vary little left over for benevolence and altruism. The path to that is straightforward and achievable, as evidenced by how many objectively unremarkable people seem to achieve it. It's just a matter of desiring that over all the substitutes and distractions that keep you comfortably in your place.