How Does a Horse Race Affect a Company’s CEO?
Horse races are competitions between horses ridden by jockeys or pulled by sulkies with drivers, often to race one another at speed. Horse racing dates back centuries; archaeology records of ancient Greek and Roman chariot races as well as Bedouin endurance racing in Arabia’s desert have survived since antiquity. Nowadays, this ancient art form remains popular across Europe and Asia and requires both the rider as well as driver to have high levels of skill and judgment to succeed.
Horse racing has often been condemned as inhumane. Horses that compete must be forced to sprint at speeds that can cause injuries, breakdowns and even hemorrhaging from their lungs; additionally they are often forced into racing before their physical maturity has fully developed which may lead to developmental disorders in later years. Some infamous incidents in horse racing involve animal cruelty and drug abuse.
An open competition among senior executives to become their company’s next leader can often be described as a “horse race.” Although this method of selecting a CEO can be an effective means for identifying leadership talent, it may disrupt morale and business performance if done improperly. Successful companies that employ this method ensure they cultivate an environment of employee engagement while making sure the process is fair by aligning candidate skillsets with vision for the future and benchmarking frontrunner candidates against external talent to ensure they meet top-of-class standards.
Recent research explored the frequency of horse race coverage during elections for governor and U.S. Senate between 2004 and 2006 in news media coverage of close races leading up to Election Day, particularly those featuring horse racing as an element. Authors concluded that such coverage was most prevalent for tight contests that reached Election Day. Additionally, the authors determined that newspapers with multiple owners were more likely to cover horse races than newspapers owned by a single entity. Recent years have seen scholars explore a relatively novel form of horse race journalism: probabilistic forecasting. This type of reporting uses polling data to more precisely predict a candidate’s chances of victory over another one – providing niche or unconventional candidates such as third-party candidates in primary races an equal chance against mainstream parties.