Most CEOs Are Dissatisfied With Their Jobs
Life at the top may not be as easy as it seems.
A new survey of chief executives shows that 75% are looking for a better job and that, as a group, top corporate leaders are not a happy lot.
The survey of nearly 1,400 chief executives, conducted jointly by the executive search firm Paul Ray Berndtson and the Cornell University Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, challenges the conventional wisdom among executive recruiters.
The study, titled “Why Executives Look for New Jobs,” shows that 75% of those surveyed had conducted some type of job inquiry or had begun to explore other job opportunities in the previous 12 months and that 58% had initiated contacts with other employers about a job change.
“Job exploration falls into two distinct job categories: preliminary exploration, in which executives gather information about available job alternatives, and active job exploration, in which executives commit to finding a new job and to determining how likely they are to obtain it,” the study says.
Among top managers, age, race, gender and marital status seemed to have no bearing on job search behavior, according to the study. A profile of the average executive interviewed in the survey, however, shows that the overwhelming majority were middle-aged white males.
“These findings contrast with the traditional notion that executives begin to search for jobs only after they have decided to leave their present job,” said Robert Bretz of Cornell. He said the findings are “inconsistent with all the writing on turnover and job search” among corporate executives.
The survey is believed to be the largest of its kind, and Bretz said follow-up studies are under way to track the executives interviewed for the initial report.
Bill Weed, a managing partner with Paul Ray Berndtson, said the level of insecurity among top executives has been rising through the 1980s. He said it is much easier for executive recruiters to get top managers to answer their calls than it was 10 years ago. “Today,” he said, “nobody doesn’t answer their phone.”
Weed attributed much of the shift to the wave of downsizing and white-collar layoffs that have hit the economy. “Everybody knows somebody who is not working. There are some very capable people who are not working, and there’s an awareness among CEOs that it could happen to them,” he said.
The shift in allegiance of even the top managers reflects a growing breakdown in loyalty between employee and employer, a commitment that once amounted to a social contract for management: Work hard, keep your nose clean, and you will be rewarded with lifetime employment.
That model began disappearing in the 1980s as companies, led by General Electric Co., began to adopt a “flat management” structure that eliminated layers of managers between the product and the executive suite.
That trend continues today as profitable corporations continue to downsize to meet international competition. The result has been layoffs for thousands of white-collar workers, an event almost unheard of 20 years ago.
