By Rachel Feintzeig
Is your boss a little grayer than you expected? Blame the recession.
New research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Madrid’s IE Business School has found that the age of executives is on the rise, as is the time spent in their roles—lingering effects of a financial crisis that eroded career growth at the highest levels of the corporate ladder.
For decades, executives bounced around from company to company, taking ever less time to climb to the top. But that was before the recession hit. In recent years, even top corporate leaders saw their paths stalled, says Peter Cappelli, one of the study’s authors and a Wharton management professor.
One problem is that the oldest generation of executives delayed their retirement post-2008, prohibiting the next employees in line from taking their seats. When companies did have vacancies, they found it difficult to lure fresh talent from the outside: workers were afraid to make changes amid the economic uncertainty.
Cappelli and the IE’s Rocio Bonet and Monika Hamori analyzed biographies of the top ten leaders of all FortuneFT.T 0.00% 100 companies dating back to 1980. The first stage of their study analyzed executives through 2001, and a recent update brought the research up to 2011.
Cappelli predicts executives will start to move around more by 2015, even if the economy isn’t booming by then.
“People wear out their welcome,” he said, “and even the people who are welcome don’t want to stay any longer.”
Once a few executives start playing musical chairs, change will be swift and widespread, he added, with the trajectory once again pointing toward “sharply declining tenure” at organizations.
The study, published in the Harvard Business Review, also found that the corner office has gotten more diverse over the last decade and that there are more female and foreign-born leaders. For example, 18% of the executives studied in 2011 were female, as compared to 11% in 2001 and 0% in 1980. The rate of foreign executives rose from 2% in 1980 to 11% in 2011. But those trends come with caveats.
Companies with foreign executives in their top ranks are “disproportionately” based on the East and West Coasts, according to the study. Women rise to top jobs fast, according to Cappelli, but they seem to be on a different track than men, most often moving up in the marketing or human resources divisions of their companies rather than the operational side. And not all executive jobs are created equal, Cappelli said. A marketing or human resources executive has little chance of becoming CEO – General Motors’ Mary Barra not included.
The data also highlights sharp disparities between career trajectories at firms. At some businesses, like Chevron Corp.CVX -1.68% and United Parcel Service of North America Inc., leaders stick around; 90% of the top leaders at those companies have been there their entire career. Other firms see more of a revolving door in the executive suite; Sears Roebuck & Co.’s average 2011 executive had only three years there. The variation between companies has to do with the stability of the company’s product, how quickly their operating model is changing and how their boards react to that change, Cappelli said.
The variation “does reflect very different notions and … understandings of how you succeed in business,” Cappelli said. “The idea that there was a corporate model really seems to be blown up. Now there’s several corporate models.”
