Not always. For example, the Senior VPs at Verizon can discuss the bits and bytes of the GSM protocol with you. They understand how 3G can be subverted, how A5 is weak, signal strength, all that.
And have you ever looked at a hospital's administration board? Notice how many of those people have the word Doctor in their title? If a hospital doesn't promote doctors into executive positions, they make bad decisions and patients suffer and die.
If a company makes an effort to promote engineers to lead up the engineering teams, or whatever kind of specialists to leadership, they will have much better results.
It's also been demonstrated that when a company promotes a personnel or finance manager to the top of an engineering organization, disaster ensues. Unless the board can rectify the error, the company will implode. Witness the painful demise of HP at the hands of Carly Fiorina, who had zero qualifications to run an engineering company - she had an MBA and degrees in philosophy and history, nothing in engineering. She came out of it smelling like a successful politician, while HP came out of it with a reputation as the place to buy badly supported, DRM-encrusted PCs and peripherals.