ABSTRACT

Al Dunlap was an American corporate executive who became known for his ruthless downsizing and turnaround tactics based on layoff s, plant closings, and deceptive business practices. His career peaked in the 1990s when Wall Street fund managers and analysts became devoted to a management philosophy known as “shareholder value creation.” Th is philosophy meant that corporate managers should pursue a single strategy-maximizing a corporation’s stock price in the short term to add to stockholders’ wealth. Dunlap carried this philosophy to extreme by sacrifi cing people and his companies’ long-term welfare to benefi t himself and his closest associates while making many fund managers and large investors wealthy. When his deceptive and fraudulent tactics became widely known, he was fi red from his position as CEO of Sunbeam Corporation and prohibited by the Security Exchange Commission from serving as an offi cer or board member of any publicly held company in the United States.