But the Stanford study shows that the professional fates of such luminaries can pivot on whether a company's failure or failings were due to management or governance problems.
"Executives are hired with the express purpose of taking strategic risk to increase shareholder value, some of which might not work out as hoped," says David Larcker, a professor of corporate governance at Stanford Graduate School of Business and director of its Corporate Governance Research Program. "Corporate monitors, by contrast," says Larcker, "are hired with the express purpose of detecting malfeasance."
Yet a recent Stanford survey found that two-thirds of executives and directors questioned believe that directors who served on the board of a failed company can succeed as board members elsewhere.
CEOs get less of a break
Only one-third agreed that a former chief executive of a failed company could be a good director at another company. And CEOs were held to a higher standard of accountability in the 2011 Corporate Board of Directors Survey conducted by executive recruiter Heidrick and Struggles and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford.
Even so, Carol Bartz, who was unceremoniously ousted from struggling Yahoo recently and resigned from the tech company's board, remains on Cisco's (CSCO) board of directors. And she may yet land another plum position given the small pool of experienced CEOs.
"As firm loyalty toward employees and employee loyalty towards firms declines, executives change jobs more frequently," says Lynn Stout, a professor of corporate and securities law at the UCLA School of Law. "This makes it harder for boards to find strong 'home grown' CEO candidates from within the firm and whom they know well, and forces them to look for outside candidates."
Also, boards looking at outside candidates, she says, "will naturally be biased toward hiring someone who has already been a CEO elsewhere, rather than taking a chance on an outside candidate who has not held that position."
All in the corporate board family
Why do directors so often escape without a scarlet letter? One reason is that the executive social network "still reigns" in selecting directors, says Noel Tichy, professor at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, because "the same names are passed around when there are openings.
"In some cases, the executive thinks 'Who wants to train a neophyte when I've got a buddy who already understands what the job is?'"
The fact that many executives serve on multiple boards only reinforces the narrowness of the business leader pool. For example, News Corp.'s (NWSA) latest director nominee, James Breyer, is a partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners and a director at Dell (DELL), Wal-Mart (WMT), and Facebook as well as others like Etsy, Inc.
"These are people who are already overloaded so what is the point of board membership, which involves a lot of work and attending meetings?" asks Tichy, who has written several books on leadership, including Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls. Also, he says, "it can create conflicts of interest, and the CEOs are already being paid for their day jobs."
