Chapter One: Origins of the C-Suite

If we analyse the roots of contemporary organisational structures and their leadership hierarchies, we can trace the tradition of contemporary management practices back to 5,000 bc and the first government organisations developed by Sumerians and the Egyptians (Scott, 1987). The Egyptians, for example, had a highly sophisticated approach towards a variety of their civil engineering projects, which in one case required the planning, organising, and control of over 100,000 people working for approximately 20 years on one pyramid construction project alone. The practice of management is therefore as old as society itself with many of the practices employed today in leading, managing, and administering modern organisations having their origins in antiquity (Őnday, 2016). Indeed, if we reflect upon the historical evolution of our own villages, towns, and cities, we will in many cases be able to see the foundations of contemporary organisational design and the demand for workplace specialisation. Societies are dynamic, they undergo revolutions (social, cultural, agricultural, and military) and as a result their modes of subsistence evolve from ‘pastoral’ in which the primary means of subsistence are domesticated animals to a ‘horticulturalist’ society and the cultivation of crops using hand tools, to a ‘post-industrial’ society, in which the primary means of subsistence is derived from service-oriented work, as opposed to agriculture or industry. The structures and working practices of our communities have therefore evolved from a nascent demand for specialist ‘hunter-gatherers’ to demand for specialist farmers, home builders, and service providers. The demand for ‘specialisation’ is unlikely to be recede given the global impact of disruptive trends, such as the internet of things and technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality which are changing the way in which we live and work at an unprecedented rate.