On one hand, managers, and especially CEOs, are hired and paid to exercise their managerial discretion. On the other hand, within the agency theory approaches to corporate governance, managerial discretion is a source of moral hazard to be removed by incentives or monitoring. In this paper we...

Drawing on interviews with 40 FTSE100 CEOs we extend the interpretive literature on identity work to top level managers, bringing into play a different balance of autonomy and constraint from previous studies. Four core (but overlapping) identities are observed: the leader and strategist, the...

Informed by agency theory, the dominant theory and practice of CEO pay both exclude non-monetary incentives and treat money itself as pure exchange value. Drawing on the economics of non-monetary incentives and the sociology of money, we use qualitative evidence from UK FTSE100 CEOs, to...

This paper draws on 59 depth interviews with FTSE100 CEOs and chairmen to extend the literature on strategy-as-practice to the practice of strategy as perceived by large company CEOs. We find that strategy for this group is effectively synonymous with vision and direction and that its practice...