CEOs Run Companies From Afar While Workers Return to HQ (1)

For Starbucks Corp., its primary home is Seattle.

Yet its freshly minted chief executive officer isn’t living in the same city or even state as its headquarters — an emerging trend of top leaders living a plane ride away at a time when many employees are seeing less flexibility than before.

Indeed, this week Victoria’s Secret & Co., based in Columbus, Ohio, named a new CEO who will be in New York.

Brian Niccol, the new CEO of Starbucks, won’t be required to move to Seattle, where the company is based, even though he’ll be spending much ...