Insiders, who have been chosen as CEOs of companies like Mukesh Ambani of Reliance

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Industries and Steve Jobs of Apple, have faired better than those who have been brought in from outside, says a survey.

According to a list of best performing CEOs prepared by the Harvard Business Review, 38 out of the world's top 50 chief executive officers are promoted from inside the companies.

"CEOs who were promoted from inside the company tended to have stronger performance than those brought in from the outside," the survey said.

The top four -- US IT majors Apple's Steve Jobs and Cisco Systems' John Chambers, South Korean Samsung Electronics' Yun Jong-Yong and Russian gas behemoth Gazprom's Alexey Miller are all insiders.

So also Mukesh Ambani, who joined Reliance Industries in 1981 when it was still a textile company run by his father Dhirubhai, placed at the fifth spot by the survey.

According to the HBR's analysis of 1,999 CEOs, on an average, insider CEOs ranked 57 places higher than outsiders in the full list.

Only two CEOs who came from outside-- online market place eBay's Margaret Whitman and Eric Schmidt of Internet search engine giant Google -- figure in the top 10 list.