I saw an interview with an old finance guy some years ago talking about this, he was saying in the past you'd work for a company and spend your career there, yo

I saw an interview with an old finance guy some years ago talking about this, he was saying in the past you'd work for a company and spend your career there, you'd get shares somehow (through partnerships or some other mechanism, but you can't sell them) and as the years go by the value of your shares increases and you get more and more, so its in your self interest to keep the company going. Now it's in the interest of a CEO to take a performing company carve out the middle so profits go up in the short term, shareholders get more money, he gets fat bonuses and the company dies. Though there were problems with the old style too - they became very conservative and couldn't adapt among other things.