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This study examines the decision-making processes surrounding C-suite changes, to help understand the extent to which these processes may help or hinder progress towards greater diversity and equality at board and senior leadership levels.

Since acquisition of corporate entities by private equity (PE) investors is known to trigger more frequent changes in leadership than in other corporate situations and its influence on global corporate structures continues to expand, it was targeted as a critical context for exploring the issue. In-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 23 senior investors from 19 different PE firms, examining how incumbent leadership capability is assessed, how decisions regarding changes to incumbent leaders are made, and how existing approaches might influence leadership equality and diversity.

The findings reveal a common reliance on informal approaches for informing decisions regarding C-suite changes, on subjective and/or anecdotal opinions of leaders' suitability, and an over-reliance on past experience rather than capability or potential when identifying suitable replacements. Evidence of heuristics and biases emerged, including a bias for maintaining incumbent leaders, even in light of concerns regarding their capability or suitability, thereby inhibiting efforts to improve diversity and perpetuating inequality.

This paper explores the decision-making processes undertaken within organisations to determine C-suite changes, a relatively unexplored area, which plays a key role in the upward mobility of a diverse workforce. The study engages directly with decision-makers to examine real-life decision-making situations and explores the findings with reference to theory from occupational psychology and behavioural economics, providing a rich exploration of potential limitations and consequences of current practices for equality and diversity.

The field of industrial-organizational psychology has been unable to convince business executives that our science is able to effectively predict who will become valuable managers, let alone that our knowledge leads to measurable economic returns. The academic literature provides little guidance to a practitioner looking for guidance in regard to leadership development. We believe that leadership is complex and therefore requires a complex model to understand it and in turn aid leadership selection and development. We recommend focusing on defining specific leadership skills according to a leader's responsibilities and expected results or work outcomes to build taxonomy of leadership roles and work outcomes. To demonstrate the business case for engaging our field's services, we propose our field would be aided by adopting some concepts of a discipline widely accepted by executives, total quality management (TQM). An example of how TQM can be applied to leadership selection and development is presented.

Maximilian Buyken is a PhD candidate at the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. He received his diploma (German equivalent of a Master's degree) from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. His particular research interests are career adaptability – especially in the face of economic stressors – occupational health psychology and the connection between the two research areas, for example, the function of career adaptive behaviors as coping mechanisms with regard to psychological strain.

States that the idea of grouping a number of cultural, commercial and industrial activities together under the banner of the “creative industries” is relatively new but it has already been the focus of considerable interest, discussion and policy making within the UK. Acknowledges that the government has been keen to promote the creative industries as a major success story and a key element in the knowledge economy. Looks at what is seen to constitute the creative industries, reviews some of the evidence about their contribution to the economy and outlines some of the management challenges and the support and promotion initiatives associated with these industries.

This paper seeks to examine how organizations can not only survive the effects of a downturn by taking a strategic approach, but also use this opportunity to emerge from uncertain times leaner, fitter and better able to adapt to new market conditions. The paper includes contributions from Mark Goodridge, CEO, Louise Earle, Jane‐Catherine Hartshorn, Martyn Sakol and Mike Thackray, all at ER Consultants, which specializes in organization behavior change.

Thie paper draws on research and the experience of ER Consultants in the field to examine how organizations can successfully deal with a downturn and positively approach a reorganization situation.

The secret is not to fall into the trap of knee‐jerk reorganization. Reorganization can be a wonderful way of creating an illusion of progress while producing only confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. This is not to deny that change is sometimes necessary – it is just that organizations need to be strategic and choose the right architecture. Successful reorganizations require trust that is built on respect and timely communication, as well as energized leaders and strategic responses that eliminate actions based on panic. Successful high performance organizations get through tough times by avoiding laying people off, cutting funding or reducing investment in core parts of the business unless it is absolutely necessary. Instead they are innovative about retaining talent in order to gain competitive advantage when market conditions improve and create an energizing environment.

In a credit crunch environment it can be all too easy for external factors and concerns to drain the positive energy that forms the powerhouse of a successful organization. As recent research has demonstrated, leadership energy can be directly linked to customer satisfaction, absenteeism, turnover, employee energy levels and, therefore, bottom‐line results. The ability to boost energy in the workplace provides significant competitive advantage by helping to retain and motivate staff.