The relationship between chairmen and chief executives: Competitive or complementary roles?

This paper presents the preliminary findings from an in-depth qualitative s tudy of the relationships between chairmen and chief executives in major UK corporations, This relationship is at the heart of a number of other key r elationships within the organisation, in particular those between the two k ey role holders and the board and between the board and the top management team, The findings show that splitting the roles is only successful if indi viduals can work their way through to a complementarity of roles, The split ting of the chairman and chief executive roles places a co-operative relati onship at the heart of the organisation, displacing to some deg ree the hie rarchical model of the organisation that the duality of roles embodied, The ma rk of failure in these relationships is almost invariably where the two remain at a considerable professional and personal distance from each othe r. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.