ABSTRACT
On Monday May 4, 2015 former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina launched her campaign as a candidate for the United States presidency. While her candidature was path breaking as the rst female to ever run as a Republican for this position, her campaign had focused rst and foremost on her experience as a business leader. The previous February she declared: “HP requires executive decision-making, and the presidency is all about executive decisionmaking” (Lee, 2015). This echoed the abiding theme that she believed would resonate with voters: the message that “what she did for HP, she can do for America” (Carroll & Neate, 2015). Nevertheless, Fiorina’s record as CEO has been severely criticized. Hers was a tenure “marked by layos, outsourcing, conict, and controversy – so much so that several prominent former HP colleagues recoil at the idea of Fiorina managing any enterprise again, let alone the executive branch” (Corn, 2015). While such criticisms are important, they perhaps miss a more fundamental issue. Does being a CEO, even a successful one, serve as a good and proper background for political leadership? What does it reect about the potentially dangerous change in popular attitudes regarding the relation of leadership to democracy in the twenty-rst century?
