Originally Posted by WestSideBilly

This is a fallacy that many CEOs use to justify behaviors which are beneficial to themselves (since much of their compensation is in the form of stock options) but not to the benefit of (long term) shareholders. The CEO's actual responsibility is to look out for the best interests of the shareholders and that their interests are placed ahead of the CEO's interests. "Best interests" isn't a simple thing to quantify, but maximizing share price to the detriment of the long term well being of the company is not in the best interests of anyone - except a person who is planning to cash out his/her stock in the near future.

If RA said what Ma said, after we got done laughing/banging our heads against the wall, we could make a pretty compelling case that maximizing customer happiness will have major benefits to customer loyalty and their willingness to undergo irrational behavior because of that loyalty. After that, maximizing employee happiness results in a happier, healthier, more stable workforce. Reduced training costs due to turnover, plus better interactions between customers, employees, and management, etc. And those factors, in turn, would lead to a lot more people flying DL than otherwise.

You don't even have to stretch your imagination on this. WN and AS have more or less followed this path and both have done pretty well, avoiding the bankruptcies and troubles that many other shareholder-first companies have suffered through.