Search results

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive analysis and synthesis of the splintered chief executive officer (CEO) succession literature and provide a unifying future research agenda.

This review content analyzes 227 relevant articles published after 1994. These articles examine the causes, process, replacement, and consequences of CEO succession.

The review develops a comprehensive typology, identifies gaps in the literature, and proposes opportunities for future research. For instance, the CEO succession literature can be classified along four primary dimensions: when, how, who, and consequences. These four primary dimensions are further explained by ten secondary factors and 30 tertiary components. Research opportunities include: enlarging the data pool to expand the repertoire of firms studied, incorporating the CEO’s perspective, and integrating CEO succession research with literatures in selection, turnover, and human capital theory.

Through integrating research across research domains, future research will be able to better predict when CEO succession will occur, how to avoid unwanted CEO succession, how to better implement CEO succession, and how to minimize negative aspects and maximize positive aspects of CEO succession for the firm and the CEO, as well as understand the consequences of CEO selection, and help move toward and understanding of how to prevent poor performance, and retain high performing CEOs.

This is the first comprehensive review since 1994. It creates a typology to guide and categorize future research, and shows ways to incorporate relevant, but often ignored literatures (e.g. human resources, psychology, decision making, and human capital).

Drawing on the literature on CEO succession research and impression management, the present study examines how the selection of CEO successors affects their motivation to initiate postsuccession strategic change. Based on the perspective of reference-dependence in prospect theory, the study also explores the impact of boards' reference-point setting on the intensity of CEO successors' inclination to change corporate strategy after assuming office.

Two-stage Heckman model and a spline function analysis are used to analyze data of 4,373 firm-year observations from Chinese listed companies between 2001 and 2016.

The empirical findings indicate that the intensity of CEO successors' willingness to change corporate strategy is diluted by the gap between the focal firm's performance on succession and its prior performance, while it is strengthened by the gap between the focal firm's performance on succession and the industry-average level of performance

By establishing a theoretical model, the present study analyzes the process of CEO selection to explore the role of boards of directors in this process and its effect on CEO successors' willingness to initiate postsuccession strategic change. Significantly, this study shows that the boards of directors would adopt internal and external reference setting when evaluating CEO successors in the postsuccession phase, which would impact the intensity of successors' motivation to manage impression by initiating postsuccession strategic change.

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.

As in many other countries, women are poorly represented at the highest levels of New Zealand organisations. This article discusses salient factors that emerged from a study of the decision‐making processes practised in the selection of chief executive officers (CEOs) in eight companies. The overall findings demonstrated informality, a lack of objective selection practices, and a reliance on networks for executive search. Specific additional factors impacting on women’s lack of advancement included: stereotyped views of CEOs based on masculine senior management cultures, homosocial reproduction and assessment based on traditional career models. Implied strategies for change include spotlighting any institutional sexism in selection by reviewing assessment practices. The article concludes by suggesting that working for “small wins” is likely to afford greater gains for women than attempting large‐scale change.

This paper aims to examine the effect of outside chief executive officer (CEO) succession on firm innovation in Chinese companies and to explore the mechanism behind the process. By analyzing the motivation of CEO successors of different origins in the context of selection, this paper identifies the factors affecting outside CEO successors’ decision-making on post-succession firm innovation.

A Poisson regression model is used on a sample of 1,084 firm-year observations taken from Chinese listed companies that endured CEO succession during the period of 2009–2016. Fixed-effect Poisson regression modeling was performed after likelihood ratio and Hausman testing to assess the robustness of the findings.

The results show that outside CEO successions are significantly and negatively associated with post-succession firm innovation. Moreover, the authors found a negative effect of outside CEO succession on post-succession firm innovation when the predecessor has a long tenure or the successor is older.

.This study contributes to the literature on CEO succession, CEO–board relationships and firm innovation by shedding light on how agency, human capital and career-concerning theories in the CEO selection context apply to corporate governance and strategy. Moreover, by exploring the factors influencing CEO successors’ decision-making in terms of firm innovation in the Chinese social and cultural context, this paper identifies ways to promote firm innovation for Chinese companies from the concept of leadership succession.

The purpose of this study is to show that social relations in a corporate governance platform between members of supervisory boards and between members of supervisory and executive board tiers can serve as an alternative viewpoint for understanding mechanisms of social selection in corporate governance networks. The study shows that through the lenses of social network analysis, it is possible to identify and understand how the process of corporate governance member selection unfolds within companies and how that selection process may have been potentially influenced by the cross-board relations, such as interlocking directorships.

To estimate network parameters and attribute effects of network tie emergence, this study has used exponential random graph models (ERGMs) on corporate governance data of Danish publicly listed companies. Econometric models are applied to estimate parameter statistics which serve further to explain tendencies of tie emergence.

The results of this study reveal that the process of selection of both supervisory boards and executive directors is interdependent. Also, the study showed that board members are more likely to select popular supervisory board members and top managers who have their expertise gained through multiple companies affiliated with multiple industries. However, these conditions for CEO selection apply only to the extent to which they have their experience gained from multiple companies but not multiple industries.

On one hand, this study demonstrates that being a dynamic practitioner who is exposed to diverse corporate environments by being affiliated with different companies belonging to different industries generally increases practitioners visibility in the corporate governance network, and therefore their attractiveness to boards of directors. On the other hand, the results show that the research on board assemblage, nowadays, should be rather observed through the methodology of social network analysis as the method gives an opportunity to understand structures through relations, from which the executive tier should not be exempted as well.

The paper seeks to identify the characteristics that successful CEOs possess and demonstrate, as perceived by both the CEOs and their staff.

Twenty CEOs and 38 staff members who reported directly to them were involved. There were two parts to the research – questionnaire and interviews. The leadership questionnaire was completed by both groups, who were then interviewed to further explore the characteristics these successful CEOs did possess and demonstrated.

Characteristics identified as important for success were a humanistic approach, achievement orientation, a positive outlook, a sense of integrity, inclusiveness and learning and self‐awareness. Both the CEOs and their staff agreed that the CEOs did possess all these characteristics, some to a greater extent than others. They also agreed that the six characteristics were effectively demonstrated by the CEOs.

To date, research on the characteristics that CEOs need to possess has been very limited. This study was the first to take a comprehensive approach to identify the characteristics CEOs need to possess and did demonstrate. It is also one of the few studies that has involved both CEOs and their staff. As this was an exploratory study, it is important that it be replicated in a larger population of CEOs.

The characteristics identified in this paper can be used to select and develop CEOs.

The paper would be of value to future CEOs and to those charged with the responsibility for the selection and development of CEOs.

Investigates the issue of succession planning and implementation for chief executive officers (CEOs) at philanthropic organizations. Provides a description, definition and classification for philanthropic organizations: family, operating, community, and company‐sponsored. Selects four foundation CEOs representing some of the four types noted in the typology for research. Gives them the same case study to review, read, and respond to five questions targeted to the case study and to their foundation’s philosophy of succession planning. Discusses unique features and uncovers similar features and analyses reactions. Suggests that no foundation CEO interviewees had experience with succession planning or felt the choices in the study appropriate. Also identifies the need to study the process of grant awarding to uncover additional aspects related to understanding power, leadership, and influence in foundations’ policies for choosing leadership and transferring authority in a planned way.

The role of chief executive officer (CEO) personal characteristics in shaping corporate policies has attracted increasing academic attention in the past two decades. In this review, the authors synthesize extant research on CEO attributes by reviewing 232 articles published in 29 journals from the accounting, finance and management literature. This review provides an overview of existing findings, highlights current trends and interdisciplinary differences in research approaches and identifies potential avenues for future research.

To review the literature on CEO attributes, the authors manually collected peer-reviewed articles in accounting, finance and management journals from 2000 to 2021. The authors conducted in-depth analysis of each paper and manually recorded the theories, data sources, country of study, study period, measures of CEO attributes and dependent variables. This procedure helped the authors group the selected articles into themes and sub-themes. The authors compared the findings in various disciplines and provided direction for future research.

The authors highlight the role of CEO personal attributes in influencing corporate decision-making and firm outcomes. The authors categorize studies of CEO traits into three main research themes: (1) demographic attributes and experience (including age, gender, culture, experience, education); (2) CEO interactions with others (social and political networks) and (3) underlying attributes (including personality, values and ideology). The evidence shows that CEO characteristics significantly affect a wide range of specific corporate policies that serve as mechanisms through which individual CEOs determine firm success and performance.

CEO selection is one of the most crucial decisions made by corporations. The study findings provide valuable insights to corporate executives, boards, investors and practitioners into how CEOs’ personal characteristics can impact future firm decisions and outcomes that can, in turn, inform the high-stake process of CEO recruitment and selection. The study findings have significant practical implications for corporations, such as contributing to executive training programs, to assist executives and directors attain a greater level of self-awareness.

Building on the theoretical foundation of upper echelons theory, the authors offer an integrated theoretical framework to consolidate existing empirical research on the impacts of CEO personal attributes on firm outcomes across accounting and finance (A&F) and management literature. The study findings provide a roadmap for scholars to bridge the interdisciplinary divide between A&F and management research. The authors advocate a more holistic and multifaceted approach to examining CEOs, each of whom embodies a myriad of personal characteristics that comprise their unique identity. The study findings encourage future researchers to expand the investigation of the boundary conditions that magnify or moderate the impacts of CEO idiosyncrasies.

This exploratory study investigated the characteristics that chief executive officers (CEOs) associated with their success.

Twenty CEOs were interviewed and asked to identify characteristics they possessed, and that they felt were related to their success.

The two dominant characteristics identified were achievement orientation and humanistic approach, followed by positivism. Very little or no emphasis was placed on being inclusive, having integrity, having a balanced approach, learning and self‐awareness or having an external focus.

In order to further our understanding of effective leadership in organisations, future research needs to build on these findings by asking individuals who directly report to CEOs to comment on the characteristics they believe their CEOs possesses.

There are important implications from these results for the selection and development of CEOs.

This study is one of the few to comprehensively investigate CEOs' characteristics. Most of the earlier work was either theoretical or narrowly focused.