[financypants]

Their duty is to keep revenue or profitability up and to the right. Every quarter that they don’t do this, analysts will grill the management team about what happened and what will change. The company is forced into a cycle, quarter by quarter, of underestimating earnings, outperforming estimates, and pleasing investors.

[epicureanideal]

Or they could grow a spine and declare they’re not playing that short sighted game.

[thesuitonym]

they could, and occasionally a few CEOs do this. It is not the norm, though.