Across the twentieth century, CEOs became more powerful, and their decisions had a sizeable effect on their company’s performance and the British economy. Some CEOs harnessed technological and organisational innovations which allowed companies to grow and become more efficient, resulting in improvements in national productivity. In contrast, the insularity and lack of dynamism of some CEOs played a significant role in Britain’s economic stagnation. History shows that who gets to the top matters. Based on this, the chapter goes on to argue that those involved in selecting and preparing CEOs need to develop pathways to the top that identify individuals with interpersonal characteristics, values, and vision focused on the long-term stewardship of companies. They need to improve diversity to ensure that a range of cognitive abilities and insights get to the top. Across the century, various corporate governance mechanisms have been used to address the principal–agent problem at the heart of the corporation. The chapter closes by arguing that corporate governance needs to be strengthened through legislation to align CEOs to the long-term interests of company stakeholders.

This chapter provides a political-sociological study of the authoritarian police tradition in postwar Japan through an analysis of the organizational change, career paths, and retirement patterns of elite police bureaucracy. It assesses the organizational impact of the sweeping democratization reforms of the police bureaucracy implemented during the US Occupation, as it also pays attention to the persistence and revival of some important institutional and cultural legacies of the prewar police in spite of the regime change. The evolving institutional ties of the police bureaucracy with other state institutions, political parties, and socioeconomic actors are analyzed throughout the era of the political contestation that followed in the 1960s and 1970s, the neoliberal turn of politics and economy in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally, the renewed polarization of politics and society since the 2000s to date.