Right, but they may be more pronounced in the current situation than in your average abstract multinational corporation situation. I didn’t read anything that necessarily committed to the CEOs being different people in the long run, although I could have missed it.
In the classic multinational corporation, all of the corporate entities are under common ownership—often the non-main corporations are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the main corporation. So having a dual-hatted for-profit CEO doesn’t raise as many concerns about conflicting roles because everything is ultimately owned by / for the benefit of the same group of shareholders. Both CEOs have a duty toward that same group.
Here, you have something I think is a bit more akin to two separate corporations with different (albeit somewhat overlapping) stockholders. I know EVF UK is a member of EVF USA, but as a non-profit 501(c)(3), EVF USA’s board has legal duties to the public interest that are wholly independent of EVF UK. Those duties are absent in your classic multinational corporation, where the main corporation owns the subsidiaries. Moreover, in order to keep its 501(c)(3) status, EVF USA has to maintain discretion and contol over its own funds, so giving the impression that the two EVFs are basically the same organization might backfire.
I’m sure this response is simplified/imprecise, and I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for the two organizations to hire the same individual as CEO. But I think complications of nonprofit corporate structure—at least where the nonprofits are not in the same country—likely make it less likely to be the correct answer for a non-profit than for a for-profit.
It seems unlikely the particular legal issues you mentioned are a great reason to have 2 CEOs?
I would find a functional/structural reason more convincing—e.g. if there were separate orgs under EVF with ops/admin/funding needs that have require distinct attention. But this seems unlikely?
My guess is that the choice behind the duo CEO involves bandwidth and resilience if things go poorly. Other factors might be really mundane, such as idiosyncratic personal considerations that are benign and normal (e.g. Howie has duties at 80,000 hours still).
Right, but they may be more pronounced in the current situation than in your average abstract multinational corporation situation. I didn’t read anything that necessarily committed to the CEOs being different people in the long run, although I could have missed it.
In the classic multinational corporation, all of the corporate entities are under common ownership—often the non-main corporations are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the main corporation. So having a dual-hatted for-profit CEO doesn’t raise as many concerns about conflicting roles because everything is ultimately owned by / for the benefit of the same group of shareholders. Both CEOs have a duty toward that same group.
Here, you have something I think is a bit more akin to two separate corporations with different (albeit somewhat overlapping) stockholders. I know EVF UK is a member of EVF USA, but as a non-profit 501(c)(3), EVF USA’s board has legal duties to the public interest that are wholly independent of EVF UK. Those duties are absent in your classic multinational corporation, where the main corporation owns the subsidiaries. Moreover, in order to keep its 501(c)(3) status, EVF USA has to maintain discretion and contol over its own funds, so giving the impression that the two EVFs are basically the same organization might backfire.
I’m sure this response is simplified/imprecise, and I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for the two organizations to hire the same individual as CEO. But I think complications of nonprofit corporate structure—at least where the nonprofits are not in the same country—likely make it less likely to be the correct answer for a non-profit than for a for-profit.
It seems unlikely the particular legal issues you mentioned are a great reason to have 2 CEOs?
I would find a functional/structural reason more convincing—e.g. if there were separate orgs under EVF with ops/admin/funding needs that have require distinct attention. But this seems unlikely?
My guess is that the choice behind the duo CEO involves bandwidth and resilience if things go poorly. Other factors might be really mundane, such as idiosyncratic personal considerations that are benign and normal (e.g. Howie has duties at 80,000 hours still).