Position practices of the present-day CFO: A reflection on historic roles at Guinness, 1920–1945

Abstract

Contemporary studies of Chief Financial Officers (CFO) paint a picture of the role pre-1960 as being reflective of a more transactional one. Historical research sheds some doubt on this, and tends not to separate the role from its occupier. We provide an analysis of such a role in a large brewery from about 1920 to 1945. Drawing on the concept of position-practices, our results suggest that a CFO-predecessor role was informed by existing position-practices, which are separately identifiable from the occupier of the role itself. Some of the position-practices are recognizable in contemporary CFO roles. Importantly, focusing on the role as opposed to the occupier, gives our study potential to more broadly inform future research on the contemporary role.

Keywords

• CFO
• Position-practices
• Role
• History
• Structuration theory