[ska]

Very few individual employee firings will have broad impact on the company the same way a CEO firing will. The whole process is disruptive by nature, so a board needs to be sure.

This isn't just "elite culture", although there is probably some of that in many scenarios.

edit: responding to a couple of comments - yes this is a feature of how we choose to structure these companies, it is not unavoidable. However, given the distribution of decision making and responsibility in a typical American corporate structure, removing the CEO is inherently difficult.

One can imagine situations where it is less disruptive, but those companies would look and operate quite differently.

[tehjoker]

Cultural practices exist for a variety of reasons. This is one of them. The people in the ownership class need each other for various reasons because they have control over substantial resources than can disrupt the plans of other members. For lower level employees, their only strength is numbers and unless they realize this they can be treated much worse for arbitrary reasons.

[postalrat]

It's disruptive by design. Does it need to be that way?