WHERE DO CEOs COME FROM? Cross countries investigation of the main variables affecting the speed to CEO

This PhD thesis deals mainly with leadership and the role of CEO within a company. Leadership has been widely explored and studied in many different ways, depending on the researchers’ definition of leadership, focus and methodological preferences. Most authors deal only with a narrow aspect of leadership and fall into distinct lines of research, such as trait, behavioural and situational approaches; nevertheless, in the last years there has been an increased effort to integrate all the points of view. The CEO has been studied as main leader of a company: in the current economic scenario changes, in fact, the CEO plays a crucial role within a company, driving it across phenomenon such as globalization, competition, talents awareness, flexible organization, etc. Analyzing the previous studies, the author found out that most of the available researches focused on CEO’s characteristics, background, education, work experience, management style, relationship with followers, board, impact on company performance, etc. It seems, however, that nobody has analyzed, until now, the process by which an executive become CEO and which are the drivers affecting the speed towards this position. This is what this PhD thesis aims to investigate, focusing on three European countries: Italy, France and the United Kingdom. With this work, the author attempts to satisfy two different audiences with different preferences: academics, who mostly prefer to see detailed explanation and critical evaluation of major theories and empirical research, and practitioners, who want immediate answer on what to do and how to do in order to be more effective, due to the fact that they need to deal with current challenges of their job and look, therefore, for useful prescriptions. For the first group, the author provides a description of the research flow and methodology and a critical analysis of previous studies, with the aim of filling the gaps through our research; for the second one, the author provides evidences on what variables affect an executive career toward the CEO position.