Chairman

"Chairperson" redirects here. For the video game character, see List of Rival Schools characters.

A chair, convener, or seat is an office, authority, or dignity (such as a professorship at a college or university) or the holder of that office (such as the chair of a committee, commission, or board). The office holder is traditionally also called the chairman, but chairwoman and chairperson have become increasingly common. Chair usually refers only to the head of a governing body, while a seat refers to any position in that governing body.

While the term chairman remains in widespread use (especially in predominantly male spheres), chair and chairperson are often used, especially in the United States and Australia in general and in the UK public sector as gender-neutral terms. [1]

A majority of FTSE 100 companies in the UK have a "chairman," and the boards of most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. also have a chairman. Less than half of the members of the American Heritage Dictionary accept the use of the word chairman in describing a woman,"Only 48 percent (43 percent of the women and 50 percent of the men) accept the use of the word in Emily Owen, chairman of the Mayor\'s Task Force, issued a statement assuring residents that their views would be solicited."[2] although the term "Madam Chairman" may be employed. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2006) says that chairperson enjoys widespread acceptance and that although some media outlets do not use it, "Chairperson is standard in all varieties of speech and writing."[3]

Corporate governance

A chair is selected by a company\'s board to lead the board of directors, preside over meetings, and lead the board to consensus from the disparate points of view of its members. The chair 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.

The term president is often used interchangeably with chair, 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 chair.

In public companies, the role of the chairman of the board is distinct from that of the company\'s CEO or managing director. This point has more recently been brought into focus after corporate governance shortcomings were 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 CEO or chair 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, the UK Cadbury Report was published in 1992. Its recommendations have been adopted to a greater or lesser extent by some countries within the European Union and the United States, as well as by the World Bank.

Types

In the case of companies and similarly-organised bodies, there are generally two types of chair: non-executive and executive.

A non-executive chair 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 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 chair 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. Because of the dual role, a significant agency cost can arise from having someone be the head of both the board of directors and executive officers. An imbalance of the "checks and balances" of corporate governance is thus created

Academic position

Chairs at academic institutions refer to the position, rather than the individual, and are often named after the person who donated the money to support the position. Professors appointed to such a chair often receive guaranteed funding (often endowed). Colleges and universities, especially older and well-financed ones, may have many such chairs.

Some of the best known chairs have been held by a succession of well-known scholars; the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge has been held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking, while the Quain Chair of Jurisprudence has been held by John Austin, H. L. A. Hart, and Ronald Dworkin.

The word "chair" is also used in an American universities to refer to the head of an academic department, particularly if the policies of a university are such that the chair is elected directly, or appointed with the recommendation of, the department\'s faculty. Chairs are simultaneously administrators and faculty members; chairs at one major American university system were estimated to spend 61 to 80 percent of their time on administrative duties, as opposed to their research and teaching.The California State University Department Chair Survey Reported"(online version), vi.

See also: list of Professorships at the University of Cambridge

See also

• Agency cost
• Board of Directors
• Chair (academic)
• Convener
• Corporate title
• Moderator
• Presiding Officer

References

• (French) MEDEF on corporate governance

Footnotes

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia