Three

Managing Your CEO’s Succession*

The Challenge Facing Your Board

 JOSEPH L. BOWER

*Previously published in Boardroom Realities: Building Leaders Across Your Board, edited by Jay A. Conger, ISBN: 978-0-470-39178-5, published by Jossey-Bass, copyright 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 253–275.

In most major industrial countries of the world, corporate law assigns the job of selecting the chief executive officer of a company to the board of directors. This legal responsibility is mirrored in much recent discussion by leading commentators on corporate governance, such as Jay Lorsch.1 Indeed, it has become common in circles devoted to “good governance” to hear arguments that the management of CEO succession is the board’s prerogative.

The objective ...

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