The main takeaway, as I read it, is that the widespread belief that CEOs are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value is not really borne out by legal precedent or the current understanding of legal scholars (though it's widely taught by management scholars). The current law appears to be that, while CEOs can be fired by shareholders, as long as the shareholders choose to retain them, the CEOs have a wide range of leeway for what values they can legally take into account when making decisions. Those values don't have to be solely focused on maximizing shareholder returns, and courts will generally not second-guess them except in really extreme cases (though shareholders are welcome to second-guess them by voting in a new board that fires the CEO).
Isn't this pretty much the same as any employee-employer/owner relationship? The employee can do what they want a lot of the time but at some point they'll have to answer for their decisions and if it's found they weren't acting in their employer's interest they can expect to get fired.
I think as the employee gets a larger and larger influence over decisions about their own compensation, the line between 'failure to do your job correctly in the best interests of your employer' and 'embezzling funds' becomes more and more blurry. And the latter of course is more than just a firing issue. So perhaps not quite the same, although where exactly you draw the line I guess is subjective.
