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The theory is that inefficient companies die in the open marketplace, and bad leadership is inefficient.

This fails to account for the sheer scale and encumbancy advantages of massive corporations. It also fails to account that efficiency can be appallingly evil.

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Yeah, I feel this often confuses what "efficiency" means from the company's perspective vs wider society's perspective.

A company that streamlines its operations and archives a huge profit margin is clearly efficient from the PoV of its own management and shareholders. However from the PoV of its customers, it's maximally inefficient, because it tries to extract the highest price for the least amount of work done that people are still willing to pay.

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