Director (business)

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The term director is a title given to the senior management staff of businesses and other large organizations.

The term is in common use with two distinct meanings, the choice of which is influenced by the size and global reach of the organization and the historical and geographic context. Further to this, the term is also used in reference to various technical (legal) definitions specific to corporate governance legislation in individual countries.

Thus, a director can be any of:

• A person appointed to act as the most senior manager of the company itself (managing director) or of a key function (finance director, operations director, etc.), in which case the title is analogous to and replaces the "C-Suite" titles, this might be considered as the British English meaning of the word.
• A person from a group of managers who leads or supervises a particular area of a company,^[1] which might be considered to be the American English meaning of the word.
• A person holding a "directorship" in a legal sense, who has specific legal duties and responsibilities for management of the company which they have been appointed to the board of.

Within companies that use this term in the latter (American English) sense it would be normal to have directors spread throughout different business functions or roles (e.g. director of human resources).^[2] In such a case, the director usually reports directly to a vice president or to the CEO directly in order to let them know the progress of the organization. Large organizations may also have "assistant" or "deputy" directors. In this context, Director commonly refers to the lowest level of executive in an organization, but many large companies use the title of associate director more frequently.

When used by a firm which uses the title director in the British English sense, being termed as an "executive director" would generally imply that the holder is appointed to the board of directors in a legal sense, and holds significant responsibility and/or a financial stake in the business. By contrast in the American English context "executive director" is roughly equivalent to vice president or senior director in some businesses.

Such companies may also have "regional" and/or "area directors", with regional director titles tending to be used by companies that are organized by location and have their departments under that, indicating near total responsibility for the operations for their particular country.