Mitchell Hamline School of Law Mitchell Hamline Open Access Faculty Scholarship 2010 To Be or Not to Be Both CEO and Board Chair Thuy-Nga T. Vo William Mitchell College of Law,
[email protected] Publication Information 76 Brooklyn Law Review 65 (2010) Repository Citation Vo, Thuy-Nga T., "To Be or Not to Be Both CEO and Board Chair" (2010). Faculty Scholarship. Paper 184. http://open.mitchellhamline.edu/facsch/184 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Mitchell Hamline Open Access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Mitchell Hamline Open Access. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. To Be or Not to Be Both CEO and Board Chair Abstract Part I of this article discusses the management and monitoring responsibilities of the board of directors. Part II explores the duality governance structure and its prevalence in corporate America. In Part III, the article examines and weighs the theoretical arguments for and against duality. Based on these arguments, this part assesses the impact of combined or separate CEO and Chair positions on the board’s performance of its management and monitoring responsibilities. Part IV turns to the empirical data on the effect of combined, rather than separate, CEO-Chair roles on corporate performance. Part V explains the views of corporate stakeholders on the duality debate. The ra ticle concludes that theoretical arguments and empirical evidence, as reflected in financial and nonfinancial metrics, strongly suggest that a corporate governance structure with a nonexecutive Chair, instead of a dual CEO-Chair, is better suited to the fulfillment of the directors’ fundamental responsibilities to oversee business operations and monitor management for the purpose of enhancing shareholder value.