Chairman
See also Chairperson.For other uses of the term chair
, please see chair (disambiguation).A
Chairman is the presiding officer of a
meeting,
organization,
committee, or other
deliberative body.
The use of the
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
Sapirâ€"Whorf hypothesis).
The non gender neutral title of
Chairwoman is sometimes used if the
incumbent is female.
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.
Chairperson, or simply
Chair, is the preferred term to replace Chairman or Chairwoman to prevent possible confusion.
In the case of companies and similarly-organised bodies, there are generally two types of Chairmen: non-executive and executive.
A
non-executive Chairman will sit on and chair the main
board of a
company and be a part-time officer who 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 position who typically leads the board and will also take a hands-on role in the company's day to day management.
A Chairman is selected by a company's board to lead it, chair meetings and lead a final consensus from a disparate point of view among its members. The Chairman is the presiding Director over the other Directors on the board and must be fair, a good listener, and a good communicator.
Directors have a high level of fiduciary responsibility of 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 use is 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. A pivotal document regarding effective governance is the
Cadbury Report, the recommendations of which have been adopted to greater or lesser extent by the
European Union, the
United States, the
World Bank, and others.
*In the
People's Republic of China, the title of "Chairman" is often used interchangeably with that of "
President" (e.g., President
Hu Jintao, Chairman
Mao Zedong).
*The Chairman (董事長樂團) is a
Taiwan-based
rock group formed in 1997.
