Changing the C-suite: new chief officer roles as strategic responses to institutional complexity

The focus of the chapter by Silviya Svejenova and JosA© Luis Alvarez is on the proliferation of top management positions, the so-called ‘C-Suite’ in business firms. In a neo-institutional vein, the increase in the number of such positions is linked to the broader institutional environments in which business firms are embedded. However, according to the authors the above linkage does not automatically trigger a ‘taken-for-granted’ response by which new chief officer roles come into organizational life. Instead, such roles are actively constructed by strategically operating organizations in response to the institutional complexity that is increasingly characterized by competing and at times conflicting logics.