The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is one of the most influential executives in organizations. Yet, research on the CEO has rested on some implicit assumptions and black-boxed some of its key concepts leaving important phenomena relating to the CEO misunderstood. Accordingly, this dissertation relaxes some of those assumptions to provide novel insights on specific aspects of the position of the CEO, namely CEO tenure and voluntary CEO departure. The dissertation is composed of three papers. A first theoretical paper reviews extant knowledge on CEO tenure and lays a research agenda that offers a foundation for future research. A second empirical paper defines the phenomenon of voluntary CEO departure and analyzes its antecedents. A third empirical paper analyzes the intermediate consequences of voluntary CEO departure. Collectively, the studies of this dissertation provide timely and novel insights on the CEO position and its dynamics.