Corporate executive

Corporate titles or business titles are given to company and organization officials to show what duties and responsibilities they have in the organization. Such titles are used in publicly and privately held for-profit corporations. In addition, many non-profit organizations, educational institutions, partnerships, and sole proprietorships also confer corporate titles.

There are considerable variations in the composition and responsibilities of corporate titles.

Within the corporate office or corporate center of a company, some companies have a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as the top-ranking executive, while the number two is the President and Chief Operating Officer (COO); other companies have a President and CEO but no official deputy. Typically, senior managers are "higher" than vice presidents, although many times a senior officer may also hold a vice president title, such as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The board of directors is technically not part of management itself, although its chairman may be considered part of the corporate office if he or she is an executive chairman.

A corporation often consists of different businesses, whose senior executives report directly to the CEO or COO. If organized as a division then the top manager is often known as an Executive Vice President (EVP) (for example, Todd Bradley, who used to head the Personal Systems Group in Hewlett-Packard). If that business is a subsidiary which has considerably more independence, then the title might be chairman and CEO.

In many countries, particularly in Europe and Asia, there is a separate executive board for day-to-day business and supervisory board (elected by shareholders) for control purposes. In these countries, the CEO presides over the executive board and the chairman presides over the supervisory board, and these two roles will always be held by different people. This ensures a distinction between management by the executive board and governance by the supervisory board. This seemingly allows for clear lines of authority. There is a strong parallel here with the structure of government, which tends to separate the political cabinet from the management civil service.

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