Sep 27, 6:01 AM
Musical Chairs in the Boardroom: A Bernese Governance Experiment
IT firm Nexplore adopts the Swiss political habit of rotating its presidency annually, but big capital won't be following suit.
Swiss corporate leadership typically favours long tenures and predictable faces at the top. Nexplore, a Bernese IT firm with around 180 employees across Bern, Thun, Basel, and Zurich, is upending that consensus by importing a mechanism directly from the nation's political playbook: an annually rotating board presidency.
The move follows a radical overhaul of the firm's management structure. Having abolished classical boss-and-subordinate hierarchies in 2019 after executive officers recognized that traditional management had become a bottleneck, the company turned its attention to governance. For over twenty years, former Thun city politician Konrad Hädener chaired the board. When he stepped down in 2025, Daniel Aebersold assumed the post, only to hand the mantle to Brigitte Hulliger after a single year.
By rotating the leadership role, Nexplore aims to prevent power concentration and build organizational resilience. Rotating leadership ensures that multiple board members gain operational insight, preventing single-point dependencies. Financial law and compliance expert Monika Roth notes that prolonged presidencies carry clear operational risks, as overly cozy ties between board chairs and executive managers can compromise independent oversight. Moving to a Swiss political model, where members of the Federal Council alternate as president, offers a structural safeguard against institutional complacency.
Yet the enthusiasm for rotating chairs will likely remain confined to mid-sized firms. Large, publicly traded corporations operate under vastly different incentives. Financial analysts, major investors, and international partners demand persistent strategic continuity and a single recognizable figurehead. As Roth points out, a single twelve-month window provides far too little runway for a corporate leader to imprint a strategic vision onto a complex enterprise.
For now, Nexplore is keeping the trial conditional, maintaining the principle that corporate stability takes precedence over structural idealism. If the annual game of musical chairs threatens business operations, executive management stands ready to halt the initiative. Whether private capital embraces egalitarian political habits or retreats to established traditions remains an open question for corporate observers.
Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com
