CEOs: leaving, or staying put?

A number of recent studies have looked at job flight among top-of-the-food-chain types.

Many experts seem to view job movement among chief executives as a barometer of the overall mobility of the American workforce. Of course, different studies find very different trends.

A survey of 476 of the world's largest corporations by Drake Beam Morin, an international human-resources firm, says the "short-term, high payoff" mindset is especially prevalent at the top of the corporate ladder: Nearly half of all CEOs have had their job for less than three years, and in the past five years, about two-thirds of all the companies have hired a new CEO.

But a new study by SCA consulting, a New York-based firm, reports the average stay of the heads of 65 large US companies has actually increased by a year (to 8.3 years) since 1995.

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