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The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the impact of a remuneration committee (RC) on the level of chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration; whether firms with a RC, pay a premium to CEOs with different skill sets (general or specific); and whether a pay premium mitigates the potential for CEO turnover.

This study uses a sample of 5,305 firm-year observations on a data set drawn from companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange for the period 2007 to 2014. The authors use ordinary least squares as well as logit regression techniques to test the formulated hypotheses. Difference in difference and propensity score matching techniques were undertaken to address the endogeneity concerns.

The findings show that firms with a RC pay a higher total remuneration to CEOs compared to firms without a RC. Furthermore, firms with a RC, value and reward CEOs with general skills by paying a premium not offered to CEOs with industry-specific skills. Paying a premium, in turn, mitigates CEO turnover by strengthening the CEO’s commitment to the organisation.

The study helps us to understand the critical role played by the RC in the remuneration of CEOs. The findings show that RCs act as an effective governance mechanism to deal with issues of executive remuneration and to retain skilled CEOs. Additionally, CEOs who acquire and develop general managerial skills will be able to extract higher pay from improved bargaining power. The findings will be of relevance to shareholders, regulators and company management who have an interest in executive pay and performance.

We examine the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE), asymmetry in pay for skill/luck, and compensation benchmarking for a sample of firms involved in a spinoff. The spinoff affects firm characteristics that influence the use of the identified compensation practices. We test for differences in the compensation practices for the pre- and post-spinoff firms. We find that RPE is used for post-spinoff CEOs, but not pre-spinoff CEOs. Post-spinoff CEOs are also paid asymmetrically for luck where they are rewarded for good luck but not punished for bad luck. Both pre- and post-spinoff CEOs receive similar levels of compensation benchmarking. The study provides additional evidence on factors that influence compensation practices. Our spinoff sample allows us to examine how compensation practices are affected by changes in firm characteristics while keeping other determinants of compensation constant (i.e., the board and, in many cases, the CEO). Our findings contribute to the understanding of how the identified compensation practices are used.

First, this paper aims to explore how CEO humility and relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams affect the firm-level performance of new ventures. Second, it investigates the moderating effect of CEO political skills on the indirect association between CEO humility and entrepreneurial performance through relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams.

A questionnaire survey was administered to CEOs and their entrepreneurial team members in 171 start-ups in Shanghai, China. The data obtained from the survey were subjected to multiple regression analysis using the SPSS PROCESS macro and confirmatory factor analysis using Mplus.

The findings are as follows. First, CEO humility can reduce relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams. Second, CEO political skills moderate the link between CEO humility and relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams. The weaker the CEO political skills, the stronger the effect of CEO humility on relationship conflict, and the stronger the CEO political skills, the weaker the effect of CEO humility on relationship conflict. Third, relationship conflict in entrepreneurial teams is negatively related to entrepreneurial performance. Finally, CEO political skills moderate the mediating effect of entrepreneurial team relationship conflict on the CEO humility – entrepreneurial performance link.

The findings of this study offer guidance for entrepreneurs seeking to improve firm performance. The findings suggest that entrepreneurs should adopt a humble leadership style that cultivates their strengths and minimizes their weaknesses. To improve the centripetal force and cohesion of the entrepreneurial team, they should focus on the team, affirm the contribution of subordinates and accept subordinates’ advice.

The study reveals that CEO humility has a positive effect on entrepreneurial performance, which enriches research on the effectiveness of humble leadership at the firm level. From the perspective of team relationship conflict, the study also explores the mechanism underlying the effect of CEO humility on entrepreneurial performance, opening the “black box” of CEO humility and entrepreneurial effectiveness. In addition, the study reveals the boundary conditions of the influence of CEO humility, enriching the theoretical literature on humble leadership, political skills and resource conservation.

This paper aims to investigate how organizational structure (i.e. centralized hierarchical vs decentralized egalitarian decision-making) can color leadership evaluations of equivalently positioned men and women independent of their actual leadership style. This study addresses three questions: Are men’s leadership abilities, in terms of competence, dominance and interpersonal skills, evaluated more positively than women when they lead a hierarchical company? Are men and women’s leadership abilities evaluated similarly when they lead an egalitarian company? Do organizational outcomes change these effects?

The research performs an eight-condition online vignette experiment on American community college students.

The findings suggest that organizational structure and outcomes influence how male versus female leaders are perceived. When leading a hierarchical company, male leaders not only gain more in perceived leadership ability when their company succeeds but are also less likely to lose legitimacy when their company fails. When leading successful egalitarian organizations, men and women’s leadership skills are thought to gain similar legitimacy, but when an egalitarian organization fails, perceptions of female leaders’ competence, status dominance and interpersonal skills drop more than those of men.

This study’s generalizablity is limited given the sample of participants and the context of the industry utilized in the vignette.

This study suggests that women’s promotion into leadership can be impeded by the decision-making structure of the organizations they lead independent of their individual choice in management style. Women leaders face not only disadvantaged evaluations of their leadership abilities in hierarchical organizations but are also not unilaterally advantaged in egalitarian organizations.

This paper highlights the need to theoretically examine how organizational structures fundamentally embed gender stereotypes.

This chapter addresses the stage at which entrepreneurs figure out that they have reached their level of incompetence (Peter & Hull, 1969) and how they might overcome it. Recommendations are made to aid entrepreneurs realize when this key moment has arrived, as well as to lay out an action plan to help them either become a professional Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or move aside and let a professional CEO run their company. Based on a state of the art review, this chapter identifies the most valued personality traits and skills, as well as leadership styles, for both entrepreneurs and professional CEOs. Those attributes are summarized as ideal job descriptions to help CEOs detect gaps between their current personality profile and the one that best meets company needs at each stage of the business’ lifecycle.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how chief executives of 20 nonprofit organizations construe and prioritize the skills they use to perform typical leadership tasks.

The in-depth interview protocol used in the study is based on the Repertory Grid Technique, which elicits assumptions, beliefs, and values of respondents without imposing the researchers’ implicit frame of reference.

The interviews generated 285 skill constructs. Respondents in this study report that they utilize a mix of technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills. Interpersonal skills, especially communication and trust building, appear to be particularly prevalent among the many skills used by executives to perform their leadership tasks.

Because this is an exploratory study, its findings cannot yet be generalized to other contexts. Therefore, the paper concludes with some propositions for further research.

The study may have implications for the design of curricula to prepare people to assume leadership positions in nonprofit organizations.

This study uses a distinctive methodology to elicit from nonprofit leaders their assumptions and beliefs about the skills they use to perform leadership tasks. In this respect, the findings are grounded in the frames of reference of the subjects, not those of the researchers.

Understanding individual traits associated with successful performance in internal auditing is needed to enhance efficiency in personnel policies affecting staffing, career development, and retention of auditors and managers trained in internal auditing. This study attempted to ascertain salient characteristics of individuals that may be associated with successful performance, by examining traits of successful and less successful auditors of a large manufacturing firm. The results show that, of the characteristics analyzed, individual levels of job satisfaction and motivation are most closely associated with performance.

The aim of this paper is to provide board members, managers, and researchers of new ventures with insights into how to manage a first-time succession process successfully. Successful succession is defined, both in terms of the quality of the experience for the stakeholders involved – in other words, how the founder-CEO, the professional incoming CEO, the top management team, and board members experience the process regarding distrust, resentment, tensions, and intention to leave – and in terms of the effectiveness of the succession, meaning organizational performance levels such as sales growth and return on assets. Depending on the initiating forces of succession (i.e. emanating from founder-CEO, the top management team (TMT), and the board/venture capitalists), evidence is offered on how best to leverage the six factors to allow for a successful succession.

The research design is built on a case study conducted in 15 first-time successions in new ventures in the high-tech industry. Primary data (interviews, direct observation) and secondary data (archival and internal documents) were analyzed using mainly qualitative methods, enabling cross-comparison between the 15 cases under investigation.

Our cross-case data analysis uncovered six factors that shaped first-time successions in 15 new ventures. The analysis also revealed that the interplay between these factors, as well as their relative importance, differed depending on who initiated the succession (the founder, the TMT, or the board/venture capitalists). These different sets of interplays led to three patterns of factors that were managed differently in each case in order to ensure the success of a succession process: (1) in the “all hands-on-deck” pattern, a legitimate case for change and the inclusion of the TMT in the succession process are the factors in which to invest the most managerial efforts to ensure a successful succession process; (2) in the “hand-in-glove” pattern, the new CEO's soft skills and the relationship between the incoming and outgoing CEOs have to be leveraged for succession to succeed; and (3) in the “heavy hand” pattern, procedural fairness and succession timing have to be managed to ensure success. A total of six cases of unsuccessful succession were also analyzed. Based on this analysis, two types of malpractice are presented that compromise succession.

The findings are based on a comparative case study of 15 new ventures in the high-tech industry that have experienced first-time succession within the last two years. Further empirical evidence would be required to generalize our results to the high-tech industry at large.

This paper provides founders, managers, and board members with practical recommendations on how best to manage first-time succession in a new venture depending on the initiating force of the succession.

This paper highlights what past literature has not yet revealed, namely that the interplay of factors contributing to a successful succession varies depending on the initiating force behind it, and each succession needs to be managed differently if it is to prove successful. This paper thus enriches existing theory by filling the unexplored links between success in first-time succession and the initiating force of the succession. Some insights into frequently occurring malpractice in the succession process are also presented.

Boards of directors often attempt to foster corporate entrepreneurship by replacing a firmʼs chief executive officer (CEO). Compelling theoretical arguments and anecdotal evidence suggest that when firm performance has suffered, a new CEO is best suited to lead the firmʼs creative endeavors. On the other hand, among firms that retain their existing CEO after a decline in performance, manipulating the CEOʼs compensation package is a common governance practice used by boards to encourage innovation. In these cases, some have argued that increasing the CEOʼs pay will encourage corporate entrepreneurship, because the CEO has been compensated for assuming additional risk. Counter to these propositions, this study develops theoretical arguments that a firmʼs existing CEO is better equipped to foster corporate entrepreneurship and that this probability increases when the CEOʼs cash compensation is decreased. Results from a sample of 100 single-product manufacturing firms suggest firms that retain their current CEO and decrease the CEOʼs cash compensation are most likely to engage in corporate entrepreneurship. Implications that this research has for corporate entrepreneurship, corporate governance, and firm performance are discussed.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.