Chairman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A chairman is the presiding officer of a meeting, organization, committee, or other deliberative body.
The use of the politically correct gender-neutral term Chairperson, or simply Chair, to avoid potential sexist assumptions with use of the term Chairman has been championed by social change since the late 1970s (See Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). If female, the incumbent may be addressed as "Madam Chairman"; the gender neutral title of "Chairperson" is sometimes used. Occasionally the term is used to describe the person in charge of chairs. The person in charge of the New England Chair company is also addressed as such.
The use of the term Chairman remains widespread: for example, the overwhelming majority of the (FTSE 100) companies in the United Kingdom have a "Chairman" and the boards of most Fortune 500 companies in the United States are also presided over by a Chairman.
The use of chair (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) as a verb (e.g.,"to chair [a meeting]" to describe being in charge of a meeting) dates from as early as 1658.
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[edit] Types
In the case of companies and similarly-organised bodies, there are generally two types of Chairman: non-executive and executive.
A non-executive Chairman is a part-time officeholder who sits on and chairs the main board of a company, and also usually provides support and advice to a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This position usually entails fulfilling a similar function on a number of ancillary board committees, as well as being a political figurehead of the Company.
An executive Chairman is a full-time officeholder who typically leads the board and also takes a hands-on role in the company's day-to-day management.
[edit] Corporate governance
A Chairman is selected by a company’s board to lead it, chair meetings and lead the development of a final consensus from the disparate points of view of its members. The Chairman is the presiding Director over the other Directors on the board and is expected to be fair, a good listener, and a good communicator. Directors have a high level of fiduciary responsibility for overseeing the operation of a corporation.
Traditionally, the Chairman also holds the title of CEO and, combined, these are the highest ranking positions in a corporation. The term President is often used interchangeably with Chairman, although this usage is much more prevalent in the United States. The CEO is the head of the Management Committee and usually reports to the board, which is headed by the Chairman.
As far as the boards of public companies are concerned, the role of the chairman of the board as distinct from that of the company's CEO or managing director has more recently been brought into focus, stemming from alleged corporate governance shortcomings observed in companies where the two roles are combined. It is believed that the separation of functions within the board of directors or in the structure of the supervisory board and management board would facilitate control over the workings of the company and increase the accountability of the Chief Executive Officer or Chairman of the management board. In an attempt to inject transparency into the relationship between executive management and the board of Directors as well as between management and the market or shareholders, a pivotal document regarding effective governance in the United Kingdom, the Cadbury Report, was published in 1992. Its recommendations have been adopted to a greater or lesser extent by some countries within the European Union, the United States, the World Bank, and others.
[edit] Other uses
[edit] Chairperson
The term chairperson is a typical example of a gender-neutral neologism that was invented in the 1970s to replace the conventional chairman, used to describe the presiding officer of a meeting, organization, committee, or other deliberative body. Chair and chairwoman (depending on gender) may also be used in similar context.
[edit] References
- (French) MEDEF on corporate governance
