Executive Insight

CEO Succession: Operationally Involved CEO Tenure is Shorter and Riskier

Booz & Company last week issued its annual study of CEO succession in the world’s top 2,500 public companies. In addition to its customary reporting of trends, this time it analyzed the data by core business model - which makes for very interesting reading - and demonstrated that operationally involved CEOs have shorter tenure and higher risk than CEOs who preside over different business models.

Models of Corporate Management

The first core business model, at one extreme, is the highly diversified holding company — distinguished by its arm’s-length approach to managing its subsidiary operations. Holding companies add value through strong portfolio management. The second model is the strategic management company, which offers guidance and leadership on strategic direction and provides expectations of performance for its group of related businesses. The third model involves more active management. These corporate cores oversee more tightly linked businesses and advise on operational issues. The fourth corporate model is the highly operationally involved company, in which senior management plays an active role in day-to-day business decision making.

The corporate core model clearly seems to influence the CEO’s experience in office. For the 291 succession events that occurred worldwide in 2010, the tenure of the CEO in the operationally involved companies was unquestionably shorter and riskier. In fact, the tenure of a holding company CEO is a third longer, on average, than that of an operationally involved CEO. (The median tenure of a holding company CEO departing office in 2010 was 6.5 years, whereas the median tenure of an operationally involved CEO was only 4.9 years.) Moreover, CEOs in operationally involved companies are much more likely to depart during their first four years than CEOs in the other three models. 

Tenures of Outgoing CEOs

Tenure of Insider and Outsider CEOs

Why was CEO turnover higher in operationally involved companies? It wasn’t because of inexperience: The proportion of outgoing CEOs who had prior CEO experience was higher than in any other model group. Nor was it a matter of a lack of coaching or support. The apprentice CEO model is more prevalent at operationally involved companies than at holding companies (38 percent as compared with 32 percent), and operationally involved headquarters organizations are much larger, as a rule. However, CEOs in such companies face some particular challenges:

1. Operationally involved companies are more likely to be acquired. M&A successions are most common among these firms (in 2010, they represented 52 percent of non-planned turnover, versus 40 percent at holding companies and 26 percent at strategic management companies). Because operationally involved companies typically focus on a single industry or business, they are often attractive targets for acquisition. And although holding and strategic management companies may engage in M&A activity more frequently, they typically buy and sell subsidiary units, not whole companies, so the CEO position is usually not affected.

2. Operationally involved CEOs more often succumb to board and power struggles. These struggles accounted for 57 percent of the forced (non-planned and non-M&A) turnover at operationally involved companies in 2010. By contrast, in strategic management companies, poor financial or managerial performance was the main driver of forced succession. In a single-line or closely related set of businesses, it is easier for the board to apply strict scrutiny to a CEO’s strategy, and power struggles with other knowledgeable insiders are more likely.

3. Operationally involved and active management CEOs are more likely to also hold the chairman title. This is twice as likely, on average, as it is in the other two models. Overall, only one in 10 CEOs has this dual role, but the more involved the corporate core is in the business operations, the more likely the double role is to appear. The correlation between actively engaged corporate cores and “double-hatted” CEO/chairmen is particularly strong in Europe.

At first glance, this correlation seems puzzling. Double-hatted CEOs are subject to immense job demands in any company; they run both the board — which is charged with scrutinizing their strategy — and the business. In active management and operationally invoved companies, their roles would be even more demanding. One may surmise that this trend is either an anomaly (in which case we will probably see it diminish in future years) or a sign that some boards still believe that a single leader accountable for the entire company provides the most effective form of governance.

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Six Key Questions Organizational Strategists Ask

Organizational strategy is the discipline and expertise that converts strategic intent into organizational capability, commitment and performance.

Accomplished organizational strategists ask these key questions:

1. How should we best structure and organize to be able to deliver strategy?
2. What capabilities do we need to improve upon or to add in order to deliver strategy?
3. How do we build a high performance/high commitment workforce good enough to deliver strategy?
4. How do we create an operating environment suitable to deliver strategy?
5. How do we sharpen our competitive edge and best leverage our capabilities to deliver differentiated value?
6. How do we assure synergy of operation and action?

There are no straightforward answers. But these are vital questions to debate and ultimately answer in order to develop an organization capable of delivering strategy. The organizational strategy process is illustrated in the graphic that follows and the articles will take you deeper into the topic.

A Model for Organizational Strategy

Why organizational strategy matters. Top performing companies successfully leverage their organization more effectively than rivals and derive over 64% more profit per employee than next-tier performers. Few companies though look at their organization as strategically and holistically as they might - which is surprising considering the extent to which organization capabilities and performance drive business value today. Read more…

So what is organizational strategy anyway? Effective organizational strategy enables a company to develop an organization capable of delivering its strategy. Simply put, organizational strategy is a clear definition of how the organization needs to change – over time - in order to be able to deliver the strategy of the enterprise and an actionable plan of how to make the transformation. This requires both the thinking and analysis to compare current state to desired state and define the gap, and the execution capabilities to make the requisite changes happen. Read more…

Implementing effective organizational strategy. Despite the challenges of the current economy, taking the long view has never been so vital for business leaders; tomorrow’s competitive advantage will only be achieved and sustained if your organization is good enough; effective organizational strategy provides the framework and the means to build the requisite organizational capabilities. Read more...

More information can be found at www.charlesmore.com.

Excessive Levels of Executive Pay - A Form of Market Failure; UK High Pay Commission

“If current trends continue, by 2025 the top 0.1% of earners will take home 10% of the national income and by 2030 we will have gone back to levels of inequality not seen since Victorian England.”

The UK High Pay Commission released its interim report on executive pay this way. The report is an extensive audit of the current debate on top pay in the UK.  It reveals the dramatic growth in pay experienced by those at the top of the income distribution over the last 30 years and discusses the causes of this growth.

The High Pay Commission is an independent inquiry into top pay in the private sector. It looks at the reasons for the gap between high and low pay in the UK in recent years and why this matters The Commissioners are business, trade union, and civil society representatives. They are drawn from a range of backgrounds and represent a cross section of political interests. All of the commissioners serve in an individual capacity and not as representatives of the organizations for which they work.

“A top executive is currently paid 145 times the average wage. By 2020 the differential will be 214 times”

 

The Chair of the High Pay Commission, Deborah Hargreaves said, “This is the clearest evidence so far that the gap between pay of the general public and the corporate elite is widening rapidly and is out of control.  Set against the tough spending measures and mixed company performance, we have to ask ourselves whether we are paying more and getting less.”

The Commission commented in its Report, “Pay is about just rewards, social cohesion and a functioning labor market, and it is the view of the High Pay Commission that the exponential pay increases at the top of the labor market are ultimately a form of market failure.”

Fairness clearly matters to people and there is consensus among the public about who deserves what in a world where pay at the top has grown rapidly while the average wage has stagnated.

A new ICM poll, also released today, shows that 72% of the public think high pay makes Britain grossly unequal whilst 73% have no faith in government or business to tackle excessive high pay.  The poll shows that, from a range of options, the majority of the public (57%) wants top pay linked clearly to company performance, while half (50%) want shareholders to have a direct say on senior pay and bonus packages.

The Commission went on to comment, “Excessive rewards are undermining relationships with employees and shareholders; they are encouraging harmful risk taking and creating an economic elite which wields enormous power but appears to have lost touch with how the rest of us live.

Businesses and Government has failed to tackle the dramatic growth in pay at the top of the income distribution amid growing public disillusionment and a hardening in attitudes towards business.

The fact that boards, remuneration committees and shareholders have failed to tackle the huge growth in pay packages shows the weakness of one of the most significant relationships in the corporate world.

Remuneration committees determine executive pay levels but many of the people on these committees have an indirect financial interest in the level remuneration, through the process of benchmarking, and have been accused of ‘cronyism’.

Committee members have been shown to be afraid of rocking the boat with shareholders and executives, and often rely on unaccountable remuneration consultants to ‘cover their backs’.”

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Source: The UK High Pay Commission

The 2011 CEO Agenda - Growth, Talent, Cost Optimization, Innovation

CEOs across the globe cite business growth as the most critical challenge they face, according to the results of The Conference Board CEO Challenge 2011, which were released recently. In this year’s survey, over 700 CEOs, presidents and chairmen from across geographies and industries identified the most pressing issues they face in today’s business environment.

The global CEO consensus about 2011 suggests that growing one’s business is the key to success. Now more than ever, business leaders are turning to new ideas, products and markets to fuel growth, drive innovation, and remain competitive on the global stage.

Put into the context of recent global events – the Japan earthquake and nuclear threat, political distress in the energy-rich Middle East, labor unrest and wage pressures in Asia, and the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe – it becomes even more clear why crisis management, flexibility and agility need to be part of the fabric of any corporation or government.

Following growth, the next four most highly ranked challenges on the global level include talent, cost optimization, innovation and government regulation. After two years of the global economic crisis, talent has re-emerged as a top challenge. CEOs selected the internally-focused actions of improving leadership development/grow talent internally, enhancing the effectiveness of the senior team, providing employee training and development and improving leadership succession as the key strategies to address talent challenges, ahead of hiring more talent in the open market.

These growth-related concerns also ranked high on the regional level in the United States, Europe and Asia.

• In the U.S., CEOs say government regulation is the most critical challenge they face, second to business growth. CEOs are viewing the growing degree of regulation as both an obstruction for growth and an incentive to force innovation and create opportunity.
• European CEOs cite cost optimization as the key issue, second to growth, amid generally slower emergence from the global recession and structural issues surrounding markets and labor.
• Among Asian CEOs, the most critical challenge they face is talent – attracting it, retaining it and rewarding it – in a time of rapid economic development and change.

Unlike previous CEO Challenge surveys, the 2011 survey for the first time asked CEOs to identify strategies that are best suited to deal with their top challenges. The wide range of strategies selected highlights the growing complexity of the global business environment and the need for the coordinated interaction of diverse parts within organizations themselves. Talent management and innovation emerged as the most critical vehicles for implementing business growth strategies.

Source: The Conference Board

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Seven Signs of a Customer-Focused CEO

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.” – Chinese proverb

The next generation of great companies will be led by CEOs who are serious about great customer service, writes James Slavet on Forbes. The quality of a company’s customer service matters as much as the quality of its code. Algorithms can fail, patents can expire, but a reputation for great service endures.

The fundamental trait of the ideal Silicon Valley startup has long been scalability. A ten-person team can build and deliver a product to ten million people, and that’s a beautiful thing. But there are times in business when you need to do things that do not scale—times when good, old-fashioned human touch is essential to address customers’ needs.

The impact of customer service has been amplified in today’s environment. Businesses compete intensely for talent and customers, and positive and negative sentiment spread faster than ever before. Great customer service builds employee morale. Everyone wants to be proud of where they work and people are more engaged and productive if they work for a company that is committed to doing whatever it takes to consistently deliver an awesome experience for customers. Great customer service is critical for attracting repeat customers and building positive word of mouth and a respected brand.

United Breaks Guitars

When customer service is mishandled, the results can be tragic. Dave Carroll is a Canadian musician who decided to chronicle a real life experience of how his guitar was broken during a trip on United Airlines, and the subsequent reaction from the airline. United failed to accept responsibility and refused to pay for the damage to Carroll’s guitar.

Carroll’s resulting tribute song, “United Breaks Guitars,” became an instant hit on Youtube, and was viewed more than 10 million times. The reaction was so strong that Carroll ended up writing not one but two sequels. Trust me when I say you never, ever want your company to be named in the hook of one of this guy’s songs.

“You broke it and should fix it, you might as well admit it, I should have flown with someone else or gone by car, ‘cause United breaks guitars.”

Read: Seven signs of a customer-focused CEO

We should all strive to build hyper-scalable businesses, but not at the expense of ensuring a great experience for the customer. It is exciting to see more CEOs promoting world class customer service as a point of differentiation for their businesses. Those CEOs who back up their claim through their daily practices as leaders will have the best chance of building the next generation of great and enduring companies.

Source: Forbes

Business Insider recently published lists of companies with the best and worst customer service:

20 companies that know how to pamper their customers

20 online companies with absolutely terrible customer service

China's Innovation Wall: How the Chinese can go from 'made in China' to 'innovated in China'

Adam Segal, author of "Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge," discusses the policy changes needed to achieve the Chinese ambition to move from a model of "made in China" to one of "innovated in China."

Only a few hundred Chinese received doctorates at Chinese universities in 1987; two decades later, China could boast 36,247 doctoral students, approximately 63 percent with degrees in science and engineering. In his book Segal, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, examines Asia's prodigious boom in education and entrepreneurship, and how its progress is hindered by bureaucracy and overregulation (India) and state control and a lack of transparency (China). Segal shows how America can meet the Asian challenge with such specific recommendations as increasing the number of H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers and calls for more collaborative communities of scientists and entrepreneurs.

Also read also Segal's article The Great Invention Race in Foreign Policy Magazine last January.

Mock Proxy Battle - Upcoming Educational Event, McLean VA

The battle lines are drawn – a sleepy, underperforming company faces a challenge from an activist shareholder. Management’s ‘darling’ division is in disarray. Despite a good balance sheet the firm has little leverage. The board is entrenched, strategy undefined. How to respond to the very public and very nasty 13-D?

Join us for this immersive role-playing proxy battle. You play the role of a board member to reveal the facts, quiz the contenders and prepare a knock-out strategy to win.

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Global Talent Index 2011 - 2015

Judging by persistently high unemployment levels in many rich-world countries, and growing pools of potential recruits in the developing world, policymakers and business leaders may be forgiven for viewing “talent wars” as a relic of a pre-downturn idyll. Such views may be misplaced: big demographic trends such as population aging remain unchanged, and improving economic performance in the major economies over the next few years are likely to result in demand for talent again outstripping supply. Moreover, even in developed countries, there remain today serious shortages of recruits with the critical “soft” skills companies require most.

Talent remains an important component of countries’ and businesses’ long-term competitiveness. How they develop, attract and retain talent should therefore remain high on the agenda of policymakers and business leaders for the foreseeable future. Released today, Heidrick and Struggles’ Global Talent Index Report: The Outlook to 2015 seeks to inform their thinking by assessing talent trends around the world on two dimensions: at the international level through a benchmarking index of talent environments in 60 countries – The Global Talent Index, 2011-2015; and at the enterprise level, determining how executives view the outlook for their own firms’ ability to attract and retain the people they will need.

Key findings from the Global Talent Index (GTI) include the following:

THE US IS THE STELLAR GTI PERFORMER, RANKING FIRST IN 2011 AND 2015.

The US lead is almost one full point (on a 1-10 scale) in both years over the next best performers. The country’s foremost strengths are the excellence of its universities, the high overall quality of its existing workforce and a meritocratic environment that is relatively unencumbered by restrictive labor regulation.

NORDIC AND DEVELOPED ASIA PACIFIC COUNTRIES ARE ALSO PROMINENT IN THE GTI TOP TEN. 

Denmark, Finland and Norway figure in the index top five in both 2011 and 2015, and Sweden joins them in the latter year – all thanks in part to their consistent and substantial investment in education from primary through tertiary level. Australia and Singapore are other strong performers, the former due, among other factors, to its high-quality universities and the latter to its openness to international trade and foreign direct investment.

CANADA, CHILE AND TURKEY ARE THE BIGGEST GAINERS BETWEEN 2011 AND 2015.

The rankings remain reasonably stable in both years, but noteworthy advances in 2015 are registered by Canada, Chile and Turkey. Improved economic performance is expected to help talent environments improve in these countries, while tough economic conditions contribute to the largest falls in the index in 2015, suffered by Greece and Venezuela.

CHINA OUTPERFORMS OTHER COUNTRIES IN THE INDEX.

China rises to 31st place in the GTI in 2015 from 33rd in 2011, but more notable is the five-point improvement in its score – the largest increase in 2015 of any country in the index. A major contributor is an expected increase in the country’s willingness to embrace foreign workers. Brazil also registers considerable improvement between 2011 and 2015, with employment growing quickly, expenditure on education rising and the language skills of the workforce improving.

The view from the boardroom and executive suite is likewise relatively positive when it comes to companies’ abilities to attract the skilled people they will need in the coming years. But our survey and interviews nevertheless reveal concerns that talent wars will be reignited. Following are the major findings from this component of the research:

COMPANIES ARE GENERALLY CONFIDENT OF SECURING THE TALENT THEY NEED, BUT WITH SIGNIFICANT RESERVATIONS.

Just over 70% of surveyed executives are either “highly” or “somewhat” confident that their firms will be able to attract and retain key workers over the next two years. This confidence may be based to a large extent on recent experience, with 66% also reporting satisfaction with recent hires. Sizeable minorities, however, the largest being in Asia, are not satisfied with recent hires and are neutral or pessimistic on future prospects.

FIRMS ARE INCREASINGLY RELYING ON DEVELOPING EMPLOYEES THEMSELVES, PARTICULARLY IN ASIA.

 Unsure of the local availability of skilled staff, companies may often be recruiting raw potential, and then trying to hone this potential into the finished article. Half of our respondents say that they are devoting more time and money to employee development than they were just two years ago.

EXECUTIVES BEMOAN A LACK OF CREATIVITY IN RECRUITS.

“The rarest personality traits,” says Karl-Heinz Oehler, vice-president of global talent management at the Hertz Corporation, “are resilience, adaptability, intellectual agility, versatility – in other words, the ability to deal with a changing situation and not get paralyzed by it.” Creativity in overcoming challenges is the most serious shortcoming identified by executives in new and potential hires – most keenly felt in Asia and Latin America – and is something that may be particularly difficult to rectify.

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Chinese Direct Investment Abroad Could Total $1-$2 trillion by 2020

A new study shows rapid rise of Chinese investment in U.S, but warns of political barriers and recommends ways to overcome them.

The most comprehensive study to date of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the United States shows its enormous potential to create economic growth and finds sufficient safeguards on national security. But it warns that the U.S. may squander immense opportunities for employment and investment gains through political fear-mongering.

The report highlights the urgency of Americans to better understand what is at stake in the rapidly changing balance between the U.S. and China.

The coming decade will bring an unprecedented boom in Chinese capital seeking investments abroad. In the United States alone, says the study, Chinese FDI is now more than doubling in size every year—though from a very small base. In order for the U.S. to capture a significant share of the torrent of investment dollars expected to flow from China, Washington needs to send “a clear and bipartisan message that Chinese investment is welcome.”

It is estimated that Chinese firms will place some $1 trillion to $2 trillion in direct investments around the world over the coming decade, but this high volume of direct investment, which could help create thousands of American jobs, is giving rise to as much consternation as applause in the United States.

The authors endorse continued careful screening for real security threats but say the procedures are in place to filter them out. As a result, “We believe the great bulk of potential Chinese investment should not just be permitted but encouraged.”

The study, “An American Open Door? Maximizing the Benefits of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment,” is a collaboration of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations and the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It was researched and written by economists Rosen and Hanemann of the Rhodium Group.

According to the study, which uses new methodology to collect real-time data on Chinese FDI in the U.S., Chinese businesses have already established operations and created jobs in at least 35 of the 50 states. Texas has attracted the greatest share of Chinese investment, followed by New York, Virginia, Illinois, California, Michigan, Oregon, Delaware, New Jersey and Mississippi.

Contrary to popular fears about China’s growing economic influence, the study shows that the total value of Chinese foreign direct investments worldwide was about $230 billion in 2009, roughly equivalent to Denmark’s. By contrast, the total value of U.S. foreign direct investment is approximately $4 trillion.

While the report says China’s share of total direct investment in the United States is now miniscule—just 0.1 percent—it is accelerating. New data calculated for the study show that in 2010 alone, Chinese investments in the U.S. totaled $5 billion.

The report estimates that Chinese firms in the U.S. have already created more than 10,000 American jobs.

Today’s report also provides surprising new details about the kinds of investments the Chinese are making in the U.S. “We have data that captures what the Chinese are doing on the ground right now,” say the authors. For example: how often the investors are government entities versus private firms; what types of industries are most often targeted; and how much money is being used to build new businesses rather than acquire existing companies.

Surging Chinese investment has triggered populist anxieties in the United States, just as Americans once feared economic domination by Japan. “Japanese investment in the United States during the 1980’s was as controversial as China’s,” the authors say, “but in the following years, U.S. affiliates of Japanese companies invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States, and today employ nearly 700,000 Americans.”

The report says U.S. review mechanisms are doing an effective job of protecting vital security interests. But it warns that continued politicization of the review process will choke off future investment and cost Americans valuable opportunities for job gains and new streams of tax revenues.

In a series of policy recommendations, the authors outline U.S. actions to maximize benefits and call on leaders in Beijing to do their part to insure success: “If China wants a more straightforward hearing for its firms in Washington, it must improve corporate governance at home.”

Among the study’s policy recommendations for the U.S.:

• Promotion of FDI from China needs to be taken seriously at the federal level to encourage and attract the right kinds of investment;
• The CFIUS process of screening investments for U.S. national security concerns should be better protected from political interference;
• The U.S. should refrain from playing the reciprocity game and making access to the U.S. contingent on Chinese market openness.

The study outlines recommendations for China as well:

• The introduction of a consumer-oriented welfare test would help ensure that market performance, not political objectives, drive corporate behavior;
• Enhanced corporate transparency, particularly with respect to ownership and control structures, would streamline investment reviews;
• Clearer separation between Chinese regulators and the firms they oversee would mollify worries that Chinese investments are simply political entities.

“These investments are going to happen somewhere,” says the Asia Society’s Orville Schell. “The question is: will our doors be open to them? Will they happen here?”

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Read the Executive Summary

 

African Competitiveness 2011

African economies have made important strides in improving their economic environments in recent years, but much remains to be achieved to ensure that recent strong growth continues. In particular, African governments must better harness the region’s resources through stronger integration into international trade and finance, improved educational systems, enhanced entrepreneurial opportunities for women and developing their tourism sectors. These conclusions, released today at the launch of a major new report, The Africa Competitiveness Report 2011, reflect research efforts of three institutions – the World Economic Forum, the African Development Bank and the World Bank. The jointly produced report is released at the start of the World Economic Forum on Africa, taking place from this week in Cape Town, South Africa.

The report highlights the following areas on which Africa should focus to ensure strong, sustained and shared growth:

1)   Diversifying products and markets. African countries have much to gain by diversifying exports and by further opening up regional trade. Trade raises income through specialization, increased competition and the exploitation of economies of scale. It also increases the variety of products and services available in the market and promotes technological innovation. Despite improving over recent decades, Africa’s share in world trade remains low, it is heavily concentrated in natural resources and intra-African trade is particularly limited. Regional integration can help African countries become more competitive and resilient to external shocks, as the recent experience of East Africa during the global financial crisis illustrates.

2)   Upgrading managerial skills and higher education. Even though African countries generally spend relatively large proportions of their national resources on education, higher education enrolment remains extremely low by international standards. The areas of higher education undertaken by a majority of African students are not in the fields of science, engineering technology and business as is the case in rapidly growing economies such as Korea and China, but more often in social sciences and the humanities. The result is a skills mismatch – university graduates remain unemployed, while African countries continue to face shortages of skilled labor.

3)   Expanding women’s entrepreneurship. The rate of women’s entrepreneurship is high in Africa – higher than in any other region. However, this is not necessarily a sign of economic empowerment. This is because women are concentrated in the informal, micro, low-growth, low-profit areas. There are two main explanations for this. First, women’s education has continued to lag behind men’s, including areas of particular relevance to running a business such as financial literacy and management training. Second, while business laws are generally gender blind, family, inheritance, labour and land laws are often not, limiting control over assets within the household and decision-making authority. The report shows that while women are less likely to be operating larger firms in higher value-added sectors, those who do so in fact manage firms that perform equally well as those run by men. What is critical is not to increase entrepreneurship per se, but rather to enable women to move into higher value-added activities.

4)   Reaping the full benefits of tourism. Africa’s rich natural and cultural resources represent a major unexploited endowment through travel and tourism, with the potential to generate significant employment, growth and poverty reduction. The region has many advantages on which to build its tourism industry, including price competitiveness, a strong affinity for tourism and rich natural resources supported by efforts towards environmental sustainability. However, a number of obstacles remain to develop the sector, notably improving safety and security, upgrading health and hygiene levels, developing infrastructure and access to African sites, and fostering the region’s human capital. Improvements in these areas would greatly enhance Africa’s ability to reap the enormous potential benefits of tourism.

In addition to assessments of competitiveness, trade performance and the ability to attract productivity-enhancing FDI in the region, the report also includes an analysis of what is needed to upgrade higher education in Africa, how to best expand women’s economic opportunities on the continent and the extent to which African countries have put into place environments that make it attractive to develop the travel and tourism sector.

Also included in the report are detailed competitiveness profiles, providing a comprehensive summary of the drivers of competitiveness in each of the countries covered by the report.

The report is available from The World Economic Forum.