The Changing C-Suite: Executive Power in Transformation

This book is about changing corporate power structures.

Over the last two decades, we have seen a distinct transformation of the ’C-suite’- a term denoting the most important senior executives in an organization - characterized by the proliferation of and variation in new Chief X Officer (CXO) roles, in which X stands for a specific domain such as sustainability, communication, digital, human resources, finance, or many alternatives. By exploring the emergence and evolution of these CXO positions, JosÃ(c) Luis Alvarez and Silviya Svejenova examine the evolving ways in which power at the apex of complex organizations is structured through roles and relationships, in anticipation of and in response to diverse contingencies and interests.

The book develops a theoretical account, combined with a rich empirical illustration, of the C-suite’s transformation to enhance our understanding of these elites’ new command posts, sources of expertise and identity, competition and collaboration, and ways of getting things done. In doing so, it extends the political perspective of organizations which has largely overlooked the changing design of executive power and the action means of senior executives, who have more leeway to construct their roles than managers at any other organizational layer. It is in moments of structural transformations, such as the ongoing incorporation to executive committees of a plethora of new CXO roles, that the political model of organizations is better revealed and assessed.

José Luis Alvarez, Academic Director of the Corporate Governance Center and Senior Affiliate Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD, Silviya Svejenova, Professor in Leadership and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School

José Luis Alvarez is the Academic Director of INSEAD’s Corporate Governance Center and Senior Affiliate Professor of the school’s Organizational Behavior Area. Since earning his Ph.D. in the Sociology of Organizations from Harvard University, where he has been visiting faculty, he has worked on the
interface between the neo-institutional school and political theories of organizations. He has also researched and taught on the career paths of senior managers and the power structures of organizations: executive committees, executive leadership, boards of directors, and stakeholders, with a
special emphasis on their social and political dynamics.

Silviya Svejenova is Professor in Leadership and Innovation at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), where she co-directs imagine.. Centre for Creative Industries and Institutions, and is a member of the Centre for Organization and Time (COT). Her research is at the intersection of organization studies,
innovation, and leadership. She obtained her PhD at IESE Business School in 2002 and, prior to joining CBS in 2012, has been on the faculty of Cranfield School of Management and ESADE Business School. She has been Chair and Executive Board member of EGOS, the European Group for Organizational
Studies, and is currently a Senior Editor of Organization Studies.