In a year that saw so many chief executives fail, we wondered: Who managed to do well? So we asked a few top management professors to each name three picks for the best CEOs of 2008. We'll run their choices all this week – and invite readers to weigh in too.

First up: Steven Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He offers one well-known and two under-the-radar choices for chief executives who performed well this year: Raj Gupta of Rohm and Haas Co. , James Skinner of McDonald's Corp . and J. Michael Pearson of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International . Mr. Gupta makes the list because Rohm and Haas, a Philadelphia specialty-chemical maker, is the best-performing U.S. stock with a market capitalization greater than $5 billion this year, Mr. Kaplan says. That largely reflects Dow Chemical Co. 's July agreement to buy Rohm for $15.3 billion. The deal is for cash, at $78 a share, so Rohm shares held up well even as the market plunged in the fall.

But Mr. Kaplan says Mr. Gupta deserves kudos for his decade-long stewardship of Rohm and Haas, over which its shares have doubled, outpacing rivals. The company, started a century ago by two German chemists, is still roughly one-third owned by the Haas family. Mr. Kaplan says Mr. Gupta inherited a conservative, family-controlled company, "modernized it, put in a lot of technology and made it effective."

Mr. Skinner and McDonald's clearly benefited this year from being in the right place at the right time. Other low-price, value-oriented retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , Dollar Tree Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp . also did well as the economy fell into recession and consumers felt pinched. But Mr. Kaplan says McDonald's far outperformed other fast-food operators such as Burger King Holdings Inc., Wendy's International Inc. and Yum Brands Inc . , which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

"McDonald's has done a terrific job of improving what it does at its existing locations, improving the food, improving service, expanding the menu, expanding hours," Mr. Kaplan says. "They've stuck to their knitting and made their existing stuff better and it's paid off."