Director general

Outside the federal, provincial and territorial civil services, some public sector agencies such as school boards in Quebec use the title "director general".

[5] In Germany, Generaldirektor may be used for the CEO of a large and established concern, corporation, company or enterprise, particularly if subordinates have the title director.

The title is, however, unofficial (theoretically any person, and even practically every entrepreneur with one employee, may call himself director-general) and by now largely out of use.

The title of direttore generale is also given to the chief executive of an azienda sanitaria, a local public agency for health services.

[18] In Sweden, the cognate word Generaldirektör (GD) is the generic title for the head of a state agency, unless otherwise prescribed by higher authority.

For historical reasons, it has also been retained as the professional title of the chief executive officers in some organisations which predate the current SCS structure and therefore may be used by those people despite them working at different pay bands.

For example, the head of the UK's internal security service MI5 is also called director-general, despite the fact that the post is at permanent secretary (pay band 4) level.

The chief executive of the British Broadcasting Corporation also uses the title despite there being no link to the civil service grading structure.

Typically, the chief administrative officer of an opera company in the US holds the title of "general director".

General directors are often responsible for artistic decisions, such as which operas to perform and which singers to hire, in addition to financial matters.