Where both CEO and COO roles are employed, an effective working relationship between the two executives is increasingly critical to successful governance. This paper describes design options for structuring this CEO-COO working relationship. We begin with a taxonomy of corporate leadership roles and related behaviors that together define the collective executive team leadership responsibilities of the CEO and COO. We then present some alternative models based on the strategic role distribution for structuring the CEO-COO relationship, along with a comparative analysis of each model’s relative advantages and drawbacks. The paper concludes with a discussion of two critical concerns that need to be addressed regardless of structure: management and governance processes, and partnership issues.
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