A quiet revolution: has the role of a CEO changed?

The behaviour of businesses and business leaders has got back onto the political agenda in the past few months with both UK and US political leaders arguing about distinguishing between good ‘producers’ and bad ‘predators’, and how best to come up with a more responsible form of capitalism.

Since the credit crunch, negative stereotypes of business leaders have been flourishing, particularly the bankers and the CEOs that don’t do anything useful to deserve their out of control pay packages.

But have we already started to see the emergence of a new kind of business leader?

Corporate Citizenship Briefing is full of examples of things companies are doing that they weren’t a generation ago: business leaders lobbying for effective climate legislation in Durban, John West making their supply chain more transparent and accountable, Procter & Gamble seeking to persuade consumers to wash at lower temperatures, more and more business-NGO partnerships to shape new product development.

Few heads of corporate responsibility would argue that understanding what’s going on in the world, thinking systemically, being good at engaging and relating well with all different kinds of groups, and collaborating with policymakers, competitors, NGOs and others are all important things.

But how many CEOs share this view? Perhaps more than you think. A generation ago the dominant view of the role of the business leader was of someone who narrowly championed and defended the short term interests of the organisation.

But look around now, and there are more and more examples of business leaders who are not only very literate on the big issues facing the world, but who are increasingly re-orienting their organisations so that working with others to tackle these big issues becomes the source of how the organisation fundamentally creates value. Think Unilever’s Paul Polman, GSK’s Andrew Witty, GE’s Jeff Immelt for example.

Ashridge Business School and the International Business Leaders’ Forum (IBLF) have been partnering to explore how and why the role of the business leader has been changing by interviewing a number of past and present chairmen and chief executives of some of the world’s largest and most influential business organisations. Our results will be published for the United Nations Global Compact as part of the Rio+20 Intergovernmental Summit later this year.

Political leaders are calling for a change, but perhaps it’s already begun?

Matthew Gitsham is Director of the Centre for Business and Sustainability at Ashridge Business School