Opinion: Apollo’s Leadership Structure Works

Regarding the story Sunday in Business, "Virtual leaders":

Your story about Apollo Group’s dispersed leadership structure concedes it "seems to be working," yet is overly occupied with sky-is-falling speculation about prospective negative impacts to the business — although none are identified — and intimating that the structure is somehow representative of poor corporate governance.

In fact, the very 2007 study the reporter cites by researchers at Arizona State University and New York University concluded that a distributed executive team has no negative statistical impact on a company’s performance and may actually enhance such executives’ job performance.

It is becoming increasingly common for leaders of global companies such as Apollo, with operations on multiple continents and hundreds of facilities across the country, to travel to and work from any number of locations in order to best serve dispersed constituencies.

Our leadership structure is hardly "unique" and instead reflects the reality of leading a highly distributed global organization today. We operate effectively and efficiently, and as a pioneer in online education, leverage technology to connect our leaders and operations globally.

Apollo is committed to sound principles of corporate governance and to delivering consistent results and long-term value to our shareholders and the communities we serve, including our home state of Arizona.

Fred Newton,Phoenix

The writer is senior vice president/chief human-resource officer at Apollo Group Inc.

THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC