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.
