The leaders of business are a continued focus of interest in management research and in the broader society. Their attributes speak to social mobility, inequality, and who holds positions of power and influence in society. This article examines the attributes of the ten highest-ranked executives of the largest corporate enterprises in the United States-the Fortune 100-and compares how they have changed over the past 40 years, a period when many assumptions about businesses and the people who run them have changed. While there has been significant change in some areas, such as the increase in the proportion of women and foreign-born executives and the rise in outside hiring, there is no evidence of an increase in younger leaders who advance faster than their predecessors and spend an ever-shorter time with their employer. In fact, top executives now are as old as their peers were in the 1950s, and their tenure with their employer is rising.

Although gender representation among senior leaders has improved since 1980 (there was nowhere to go but up), there's still a lot of work to do. An analysis of Fortune 100 executives' career histories and demographics over the past 40 years shows where companies have made strides toward diversity at the top and where they can do better. To get closer to parity, employers must invest more in leadership development overall and give women more equitable access to growth opportunities.

Companies say they want their employees to learn and grow, but in practice, they skimp on training. In a recent study of 1,481 employed learners, more than one-third of them said they had received no training from their companies in the previous 12 months. Instead, many acquire work-related skills through MOOCs (massive open online courses)--usually without their employers' knowledge or support. This represents a missed opportunity for companies to harness their employees' efforts in the service of organizational goals. Managers can help team members put their learning into context by providing study time and informal guidance before and during the courses. Having employees pilot courses for one another helps ensure relevance and quality. And tracking completion reinforces the value of learning while increasing the odds that people will stick with their coursework.

The authors conducted two surveys, yielding responses from more than 1,200 young professionals, and had 18 in-depth interviews to examine the work behaviors and experiences of early-career, highly skilled employees. They found that young professionals have short average tenures at organizations. Ninety-two percent of them are on the lookout for other job opportunities while employed, and their job search continues even if they seem engaged in their current job. They consider jobs with high stakes, top management support, and ample formal training the most valuable and important for their career development, and they want more coaching, mentoring, and formal training from employers than is currently given to them. The authors organize their conclusions around three themes: the rewards of job change, the job-search behaviors of this footloose group of professionals, and the management-development practices that may keep them with employers. The researchers note that their findings on the relationship between employer changes and promotions represent a radical departure from both previous empirical research and past conventional wisdom about job hopping and career success. A decade ago, it was generally believed that promotions accompanied with a disproportionately large increase in responsibility were more likely to be given to insiders than outsiders. This advantage seems to have eroded: The authors found no marked differences between the promotion patterns of job hoppers and those who stayed with the same employer during the early stage of their career. Young professionals have marked and ambitious career goals that are often not linked to any particular organization, and they don't see frequent jumps across employers in a negative light. In fact, this relentless job search is not necessarily driven by dissatisfaction with the job and the intention to leave the organization, as traditional models of job search and turnover might assume.

In an HBR article in January 2005, Cappelli and Hamori compared leaders in the top 10 roles at each of the Fortune 100 companies in 1980 with those in 2001. Among their findings were a sharp decline in the number of senior executives who had spent their entire careers with one company, and a corresponding uptick in rapidly advancing young executives who spent less time with any one employer. In this article they and Bonet extend that analysis to 2011. Perhaps the most noteworthy changes they've found are demographic. For example, the percentage of executive women has risen quite a bit. But the 2008 recession caused some interesting developments: Financial institutions are bringing in more senior executives from outside than they did a decade ago; leaders have been hesitant to leave their organizations for new opportunities; and companies have held on to even underperforming executives to maintain stability. Generously illustrated with graphics, this article profiles today's leaders in four areas--career trajectory, education, diversity, and hierarchy within the senior ranks.

Research shows that today's most sought-after young professionals are constantly looking for their next job. Gaps between what they want in terms of professional development and what their companies provide are largely to blame.

Executives stay with an organization for only 3.3 years, on average. But does switching employers offer a fast-track to the top jobs? Research suggests the answer is no. In fact, that's one of four career fallacies identified in a study examining how managers get ahead. Fallacy 1: Job hoppers prosper. An analysis of the career histories of 1,001 CEOs and 14,000 non-CEOs in top corporations shows that the more years executives stay with the company, the faster they make it to the top. Lesson: Build a resume that demonstrates a balance between external and internal moves. Fallacy 2: A move should be a move up. Among the executives studied, about 40% of job changes were promotions, 40% were lateral, and 25% were demotions. Lesson: While a downward move will detract from your CV, a lateral move can often lead to a promotion or enhance your CV when the new company conveys brand value. Fallacy 3: Big fish swim in big ponds. When making a move, 64% of executives trade down to smaller, less-recognized firms. They gain better titles or positions, cashing in on the brand value of their former employer. Lesson: Join top companies as early in your career as you can, and transfer to a lesser company only if the job is very attractive. Fallacy 4: Career and industry switchers are penalized. It's not always a bad move to change industries, or even careers, as is often assumed. Firms hire employees from different businesses for many reasons: For example, another industry might simply offer superior human capital. Lesson: Look for industries where your skills represent a genuine asset. Every career is unique; what's important is to look at each move with a critical eye.

By comparing the top executives of 1980's Fortune 100 companies with the top brass of firms in the 2001 list, the authors have quantified a transformation that until now has been largely anecdotal. A dramatic shift in executive careers, and in executives themselves, has occurred over the past two decades. Today's Fortune 100 executives are younger, more of them are female, and fewer were educated at elite institutions. They're also making their way to the top more quickly. They're taking fewer jobs along the way, and they increasingly move from one company to the next as their careers unfold. In their wide-ranging analysis, the authors offer a number of insights. For one thing, it has become clear that there are huge advantages to working in a growing firm. For another, the firms that have been big for a long time still provide the most extensive training and development. They also offer relatively long promotion ladders--hence the common wisdom that these "academy companies" are great to have been from. While women were disproportionately scarce among the most senior ranks of executives in 2001, those who arrived got there faster and at a younger age than their male colleagues. Perhaps the career hurdles that women face had blocked all but the most highly qualified female managers, who then proceeded to rise quickly. In the future, a record of good P&L performance may become even more critical to getting hired and advancing in the largest companies. As a result, we may see a reversal of the usual flow of talent, which has been from the academy companies to smaller firms. It may be increasingly common for executives to develop records of performance in small companies, or even as entrepreneurs, and then seek positions in large corporations.