Week4.Writing

Introduction:

A CEO is the top manager in the company. In other words, the CEO is the most important existence for the company’s survival and development. Nowadays, the competitions between companies are very fierce, and having a successful CEO is very important to a company. Therefore, many companies try their best to find CEOs who have good renown and are capable. However, having renown and being capable dose not mean successful. According to The Worst CEOs In American History, that John Sculley who was hired to be Apple’s CEO in 1983 and Thomas Edison are considered worst CEOs (McIntyre, 2010). I think a successful CEO not only needs knowledge, but also know how to make the company become successful, For this reason, I choose my topic to be What influences can some factors have on becoming a successful CEO and focusing on how a CEO who have these factors without knowledge to make a successful career.  

Rationale:

I choose this topic for 3 reasons. First, being a student who is majoring in management, manager is a position that I have paid close attention for a long time for my future career. As Ibarra and Hansen pointed in Do We Celebrate the Wrong CEOs, that CEOs always be considered getting much admiration (2009). There has many CEOs, however, just a few of them can be successful and well-known, so I am interested in how to get the admiration. Second, I choose to talk about CEO because a CEO is the top manager in the company. In other words, the CEO is the most important existence for the company’s survival and development. What they do may affect the company a lot. I am wondering how a CEO’s ability can influence the company exactly. The reason for me to write about how a CEO can make a successful company instead of write what factors can make a CEO become successful is because a CEO’s success is depended on his contribution in the work. Therefore, the factors that made a CEO manage a company successful are similar to the factors that help a CEO get success. The audience may be the student who chooses CEO to be the future job and people who want to learn manage skills.

Methodology:

To write the article, I need to know what factors that a CEO’s need to have to manage the company. Therefore, I plan to look up the best CEO list in business report, news paper and find information about those CEOs’ strong points. Than I can explore how these points affect a CEO’s work and why they are important. I will use the Internet to check the basic work for CEO and the some special things that those CEOs’ do. Also, I plan to find some report about the successful CEO in business magazine and use some information from the scholarly journals. 

Detailed plan:

In the beginning of my article, I will explain a CEO’s basic job, importance to the company. Later, I will talk about the connection between a CEO’s success and a company’s success. Then, I will explore how some specific factors (responsibility, work experience professional skills and discernment ability) affect a CEO’s work and why these factors are important by giving positive and negative examples from the news report (Web/ print text, picture). Finally, I will make a conclusion that how these factors are more necessary than knowledge to a CEO to get success in the career.

Preliminary conclusion:

These days, some companies employ successful CEOs, like Steve Jobs and Gareth Davis (Hansen, Ibarra, Peyer). In contrast, sometimes the result is not satisfactory. For example, the CEOs in GM and BP were fired because of their failed management. The companies have changed their CEOs to deal with the companies’ failure. As John Carver said in Boards in Nonprofit and Public Organization, that “If something goes wrongs in the organization, there is only one person at whom the board can point”(2006). Maybe there have some other things cause the failure, the CEO needs to respond for all the bad results, so it is very important for a CEO to know how to manage the company. Though having high education certificate is important and for the CEO, other factors which connect to the real world, like having good sense of responsibility, work experience, professional skills and discernment ability are also important in the process of managing company.

References:

Carver, John. (2006). Boards in Nonprofit and Public Organization. Jossey-Bass (pp.418). San Francisco, CA.

Hansen, Morten. T., Ibarra, Herminia. (2009, December 14). Do We Celebrate the Wrong CEOs. Retrieved from

<http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/12/do_we_celebrate_the_wrong_ceos.html#>

Hansen, Morten. T., Ibarra, Herminia, Peyer, Urs. The 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World. Retrieved from

<http://hbr.org/2010/01/the-best-performing-ceos-in-the-world/ar/1#>

McIntyre, Douglas A. (2010, April 27). The Worst CEOs In American History. Retrieved from <http://247wallst.com/2010/04/27/the-worst-american-ceos-in-history/>