The conventional wisdom about IBM(s ibm) is that Louis V. Gerstner, the RJR Nabisco executive who became IBM’s CEO and chairman in 1993, righted the ship, taught the elephant to dance, and insert-whatever-turnaround-metaphor-you-want here.

There’s no doubt he did turn around a struggling company founded nearly a century before by Thomas J. Watson. But he also helped sow the seeds for IBM’s current distressed situation, according to a new ebook, The Decline and Fall of IBM by Robert X. Cringely.

One of the negatives Gerstner brought to IBM was the notion of superstar CEO with pay package to match. According to synopsis of Cringely’s book on Amazon.com:

Only the Watson family had become rich running IBM with later CEOs like John Opel and John Akers living comfortable lives with lots of perks, but they never got BIG RICH. That changed with Gerstner. Sam Palmisano an IBM lifer followed Gerstner as CEO and followed, too, the Gerstner…