Harvard Business Review

Does Your Board Need an Executive Chair?

Companies like Amazon, Google, and Iron Mountain have opted for an executive board chair in recent years. Separate from the CEO, the executive board chair is typically responsible for both oversight and strategic decision-making.

GSEM Professor Markus Menz, Robert Langan, and Ryan Krause studied S&P 1500 companies from 2002 to 2020 to understand what a board chair does, and when such a position might be beneficial to a company. They found that companies that used the executive chair position for a limited period during a CEO succession significantly outperformed those that did not.

> For more information on this research, please consult the web page published by the GSEM. 

> To read the Harvard Business Review article, please click on the link