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.

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.