Corporate titles in Themiclesia

Corporate titles in Themiclesia are terms adopted by most businesses that are not sole proprietorships to describe the relative position and division of duties within the business structure.

History

Most Themiclesian businesses before the modern era had fluid titles that reflected temporary assignments, and permanent offices for employees were comparatively rare. One oft-appearing title was "manager" (理事), literally meaning "one who sorts affairs". In the 19th century, businesses with more than one place of operation started to introduce variations on the term "manager" to reflect a diversifying operation.

As operations on the part of the employees became more complex, so did ownership on the side of the owners, with corporations growing more common as commercial entities. As the corporation was a legal entity separate from its shareholders, there was a need for an officer of the corporation in charge on behalf of the owners and responsible to the owners. This title of "director" (董事), literally "answerable for affairs" was borrowed from local administration, where the responsible officer oversaw a settlement on behalf of a magistrate. Just as a responsible officer in administration was necessarily a resident of the settlement, the responsible officer of a corporation was also necessarily an owner in this period, to ensure an alignment of interests with other, non-managing owners.

The rule that a director must also be a shareholder was dropped in 1920, since public issuance of shares with miniscule values rendered the rule useless in ensuring alignment of interests; that function was later vested in bonuses based on the company's profits, rather than the increasing value of the director's own shareholdings.

Starting from the Universal Coach Company in 1839, the title of "general manager" (總理事) came into being, though it did not spread to other companies until much later. While the general manager was a sole office at Universal Coach, it was a committee in other companies, consisting of multiple individuals with the title of "general manager" with or without other specific functions. Where there were multiple general managers, the treasurer was almost always a general manager, since the entire business was concerned with revenues and expenses, and the company's chief legal counsel was also frequently made a general manager, since the law was also of concern to the entire business.

By 1900, there were often many general managers who had no specific competences, appointed for patronage or supervision. Since there is a collegiate element to this form of corporate governance, a powerful figure would seek to enhance their influence by having allies appointed as general managers. However, it is noted that most businesses were still run presidentially at the most senior level, even though there could be multiple general managers. Thus, it became customary to denote the general manager (if only informally) who was in actual charge of running the business as the "presiding" general manager. Most companies did away with general managers who were neither the "presiding" nor the "vice presiding" general manager, as these became associated with corruption, inefficiency, and generally poor governance, by 1940.

Corporations

Board

Members of the board of director are known as "responsible officers" (董事), which can be very literally translated as "one who comprehends, one who has responsibility over".

Chief executives

Historically, Themiclesian businesses were sometimes managed collegiately by individuals who had competence over the entire business called "general managers", who functioned as a stand-in for a board of directors that was not actively involved in the business. In such a case, collegiate governance was preferred to avoid malfeasance, though it has become rare since the turn of the 20th century for a business to be run collegiately at the top level. In such cases, the most important general manager was called the "presiding general manager", and a deputy was called the "vice presiding general manager". These positions would evolve, in most companies, into the modern positions of "president" and "vice president" by dropping the words "general manager" by around 1960 (but this follows a wave of corporate reform and is not a simple renaming).

In a modern Themiclesian company, the most senior office that can be held as an employee is usually titled "president" (總裁) or, in old fashioned companies, as "presiding general manager" (總裁理事). This is equivalent to a CEO or managing director in other nations, but the term CEO is not generally used in Themiclesia as a title. The role of president is often defined by the rules of the board of directors, depending how deeply involved the board is in the day-to-day running of the company. In very large companies, the board is often distant from operations, as so the president is very powerful, and all other employees of the company ultimately report to the president.

The position of "vice president" (副總裁) is usually the second-most senior officer of a company. In general, the vice president's remit is the same as the president and takes over in the event the latter becomes unavailable. When the president is working, the vice president in most organizations acts as an advisor to or representative of the president. Thus, the vice president is also a general manager, since their purview is over the entire organization. In some businesses, the vice president retained the old title as "vice president general manager", though this is rare and implies the vice president is a co-chief executive. There are also some businesses where the vice president is the chief executive, where the office of president is reserved for a member of the board of directors.

The relationship between the president and vice president also varies considerably from business to business. In many instances, the president has no control over who the vice president is, when directly appointed by the board, and what their portfolio is; the vice president would have a direct reporting line to the board.

Where a company has multiple vice presidents, who are not general managers, the one that is deputy to the president will often be noted as the vice president internally. This practice is first done at Gi-mar Bank in 1983, whose vice president was reportedly frustrated with the fact that his position as second-in-charge was not reflected in his title, and his subordinates with titles like "executive vice president" were often assumed to outrank him. It would also have seemed extremely selfish to change the titles of every other vice president at the bank. Rather than doing so, he issued a circular requiring the bank to address him simply as "the vice president" and not to include his name, while every other vice president was noted as "vice president X".

Senior management

Until 1970, it was common even in the largest corporations for the most senior employees other than the president and vice president to be titled as directors (持事), but only for finance, legal affairs, and accounting. This may owe to the fact that these areas were considered professional disciplines. The traditional model of site management used the company's various operational sites as natural units of management. If a company had three factories, it would have three managers for them, and a manager was usually responsible for nearly everything that happened in the factory, including procurement, hiring, production, safety, welfare, etc. If it had more than a handful of factories, they may be districted, with district controllers titled as senior managers. The only thing that was outside of a manager's purview was bookkeeping, often under governance or statutory requirement.

On one hand, the rapid expansion of corporations to encompass hundreds, or even thousands, of sites makes it impractical for a president to be in direct control over each site's manager or even senior managers, and introducing more tiers of managers was avoided in view of the risk of diluting authority. On the other hand, the introduction of functional management was a type of simultaneous specialization and centralization, dividing the traditional manager-of-everything into its production, procurement, and hiring elements. Such heads of functions to bear the title of "vice president" (and its variations) as introduced from Casaterra.

In a large organization, the following titles are common:

• Senior executive vice president
• Executive vice president
• Senior vice president
• Vice president
• Assistant vice president

Not all varieties of the title are always present on the reporting chain. It is rare for more than three persons titled as VPs to report to each other in turn in any organization, and a senior (executive) vice president is often simply an (executive) vice president who has served for a longer duration. In some organizations, all vice presidents are always above directors, but in others, vice presidents govern business functions (production, sales, etc.), while directors oversee administrative ones; in the latter case, directors may come in varieties like assistant director, deputy director, principal director, managing director, etc.

In the very largest of companies, like the Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Company (ICMC), more tiers of senior management may be found, such as the position of associate vice president in ICMC. However, such extensive usage of VP titles is often diagnostic of a strongly sales-oriented organization or department, where individuals are promoted based on their performance and are needed to manage rapidly-expanding markets and regional presence. Thus, even smaller banks will usually have a considerable number of VPs, considering the number of niche financial products which are independently developed, sold, and subsequently managed. But in more traditional firms, VP titles may still be reserved for heads of principal functions, or in the most extreme case, only for the actual deputy of the president.