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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 paper is to examine, within a succession framework, the impact of the gender composition of boards of directors on the gender of the CEOs they appoint, and to assess the impact of newly appointed CEOs' gender on risk taking by the firm.

The authors estimate a two‐stage least squares regression using data on 679 CEO successions in North American firms.

The results show that successor CEOs are more likely to be female the greater the percentage of females on the board, regardless of other succession characteristics such as whether the new CEO is from inside or outside the firm. Furthermore, a change in CEO from male to female is associated with a decrease in several measures of firm risk taking.

The sample is restricted to relatively large, exchange‐traded North American firms and may not generalize to other groups.

The findings suggest that women aspiring to CEO positions and firms wishing to promote women should monitor board composition to ensure female representation. Other steps that the firm may take to promote women to this position (such as looking outside the firm) have an insignificant impact when board composition is taken into account.

The findings are novel and inform CEO succession research by demonstrating which succession process characteristics work to increase females' chances and which have no effect. Female CEOs are likely to provide leadership that reduces the risk profile of the firm.

There is no previous systematic and theoretical investigation of the interim CEO succession practice. This research attempts to fill the gap by studying this phenomenon and hence advance executive succession research/practice.

Based on agency theory, the authors propose a model and several propositions to predict what determines the origin of interim CEOs, the length of the interim tenure, and the career prospects for the interim CEO after the interim tenure.

Both firm performance and environmental uncertainty play an important role in the dynamic interim CEO succession process.

The paper provides the foundations for future empirical research on interim CEO succession.

Board members at companies experiencing sudden CEO departures should choose a loyal non‐aggressive veteran to be the interim CEO so as to minimize disruption and to smooth the transition. They should use caution when choosing an internal candidate because if such a candidate is not chosen to be the permanent CEO later, a talent may be lost.

The research is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of interim CEOs. The authors make a unique contribution to the literature on CEO succession.

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).

The aim of this paper is to investigate CEO succession in China's state‐owned enterprises (SOE) from within intra‐industry labor market. One hypothesis looks at the proportion of SOEs in the industry which will be negatively associated with the likelihood of intra‐firm succession. Another proposition claims the performance gap between SOEs and the industry average level is positively related to the likelihood of intra‐firm succession.

Secondary source data on 79 CEO successions and descriptive company measures were obtained. Background variables such as ROA and employee number were collected from the Tianjin Statistical Yearbook. Pearson and logistic regression coefficients provided tests of hypotheses.

The hypotheses are strongly supported given all measures of performance. The likelihood of intra‐firm succession is negatively associated with the proportion of SOEs in a particular industry. The lower the performance of SOEs behind the industry average level, the greater the likelihood of intra‐firm succession.

The sample size used is moderate. Even though Tianjin is a large industrial center, generalizations to all of China may be limited.

The results support the overall argument that firms within a gradualist economic transition environment in China will tend to choose an internal CEO succession when firms have a limited qualified managerial supply outside the organization. Future research examining the CEO successor in both SOEs and non‐SOEs will provide a more complete picture of organization management with transitional economies evolving into the largest world‐leading economies.

The data base is unique. The paper looks at the business activities and management processes of China's SOEs for the purpose of understanding the way leadership develops; and the organizational effect it has on top management succession. The research not only contributes to the succession literature but also enables managers and investors to better understand the practice of top management succession in Chinese SOEs.

This study aims to contribute to the academic disciplines of entrepreneurship and management by developing a new theory that explains Founder-CEOs’ succession in family and non-family firms. Many scholars failed to generate a specific theory to describe the succession of Founder-CEOs. Family firms remain complex enterprises comprising interconnectedness of cultural interests in which corporate governance occurs by families, Founder-CEOs and sometimes a board of directors.

This study’s design/methodology/approach reflects post-modernist epistemological and ontological perspectives for conducting systematic literature reviews. To identify relevant studies in the review, the several databases (Australian Business Dean’s Council Journal Quality List; EBSCO Database, including PsycINFO and Psych studies; Web of Science) and a mix of ranked journals from entrepreneurship, management and psychology were used.

The findings and results in this paper reflect the purpose, methodology and literature analysis culminating in 1,582 peer-reviewed studies. A total of 182 peer-reviewed studies met the criterion for review. Throughout the research process, a systematic literature review uncovered management literature gaps overlooked for decades during the theory-building process. Hence, developing a theory of Founder-CEOs succession used a combination of systematic, inductive, comparative and interactive approaches.

A Theory of Founder-CEOs Succession explains the strategic process of replacing a founder systematically. The promotion of, and incentives for, internal executives have been topics of great interest and deliberation among scholars and practitioners for a long time. This study contributes research implications for theory building in the academic disciplines of entrepreneurship and management by offering scholars and practitioners a theory that does not exist to describe Founder-CEOs’ succession encompassing both strategic successes and failures. By incorporating successes and failures, this study provides realistic reflections of Founder-CEOs.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce CEO succession (and subsequent TMT turnover) as a knowledge enabler. Focusing on absorptive capacity, an important dynamic capability involving the acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation of knowledge, this paper highlights the role of a new CEO in emphasizing specific facets of the knowledge management (KM) process to fulfill expected strategic mandates.

This paper presents a conceptual framework that underscores the importance of CEO succession as a knowledge enabler by depicting its influence on the various dimensions of absorptive capacity. To this end, this paper develops an integrated set of propositions that unpack the influence of different types of CEO successions that trigger and enable different KM processes involved dimensions of absorptive capacity.

The theoretical framework presented in this paper suggests that given a certain succession context (forced or voluntary turnover of predecessor) different types of CEO succession, combined with possible executive turnover, will constitute a reorientation in top management experience and expertise. This will in turn trigger certain dimensions of absorptive capacity (potential or realized), to fulfill specific strategic mandates such as strategic change or strategic continuity.

This paper presents a theoretical framework that underscores the importance of studying CEO succession in conjunction with their influence on different knowledge dimensions of absorptive capacity. CEO succession (and subsequent changes in top management team composition) is suggested to be a knowledge enabler. Based on the context of CEO turnover (forced vs voluntary) and the amount of change undergone in TMT composition, different types of CEO succession (based on their origin) are suggested to have different challenges to overcome and different strategic mandates to fulfill. Fulfilling these strategic mandates will require an emphasis on different facets of the KM process, which is encompassed in the dimensions of absorptive capacity. This will, in turn, resolve questions about which knowledge activities the organization needs to invest its resources in and resources allocation decisions may become easier.

Based on their origin, three kinds of CEO succession have been described in this paper – insider-follower, insider-contender and outsider succession. Each of these types of succession encounter different challenges and are expected to fulfill different kinds of strategic mandates. Accordingly, this paper proposes that each kind of CEO succession trigger and enable the knowledge components of absorptive capacity (knowledge acquisition, knowledge assimilation, knowledge transformation and knowledge exploitation) in different manners. This will in turn, allow firms to prioritize the allocation of resources toward different kinds of knowledge activities related to absorptive capacity.

This paper suggests that the CEO succession event, although broadly discussed in management research, has been overlooked when it comes to KM in organizations. Given that strategic leadership is one of the powerful enablers of organizational practices and outcomes, this paper emphasizes that different types of CEO succession may be able to influence the KM process by enabling the different dimensions of absorptive capacity (potential and realized).

The aim of this paper is to examine the long‐term abnormal returns of firms that have experienced chief executive officer (CEO) succession. According to Chief Executive magazine, directors rank CEO succession as the second most important issue their firms face, the first being strategic planning.

This study examines 202 CEO succession announcements. It utilizes two returns‐generating models to calculate abnormal returns for two estimation windows of 200 trading days before and after the succession event.

The results support the theory first developed by Guest (1962) that succession is an adaptive event. Specifically, this study shows that firms that experience a CEO change have positive abnormal returns, suggesting that new CEOs raise the firm performance. Moreover, this study shows that firms that experience CEO change due to CEO retirement improve firm performance in the post‐succession period, whereas succession due to CEO sudden death or illness seems to have no direct effect on the long‐term performance of these firms. Finally, this study provides strong evidence that outside successions help firms raise performance more than inside successions.

Like any empirical event‐study, the validity of the results depends on the absence of confounding events. Future research could be to explore the relationship between the information content of the CEO succession announcement and the market reaction.

This paper is believed to be the first attempt to empirically examine the relation between CEO turnover and long‐term firm performance through the analysis of the successor's origin and of the force initiating the change, by using an event study methodology.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether Chief Executive Officers’ (CEOs) discrepant leadership styles are reflected on CEO succession outcomes, operationalised as changes to employee views of the organisation following the succession.

Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 230 employees who completed an online survey at four time points over a three-year period. Linear mixed models analyses tested for significant changes to alignment, participation, learning culture, organisational commitment and engagement perceptions over time. Qualitative data were content-analysed to ascertain the CEOs’ leadership styles and explore employee views of the organisation.

While alignment and participation scores did not significantly increase following the CEO succession, learning culture, organisational commitment and engagement increased significantly.

This study adds to the limited research on CEO succession. It suggests that what renders a succession adaptive or disruptive may be contingent on the leadership styles of outgoing and incoming CEOs.

The transition from a transactional to a transformational CEO may have a stronger impact on motivational and attitudinal outcomes (e.g. engagement) than on operational outcomes (e.g. alignment).

This study is the first to longitudinally examine a range employee outcomes of CEO succession considering the incoming and outgoing CEOs’ discrepant leadership styles. It extends the leadership literature by empirically showing that, despite the disruption underlying a succession event, employee views of the organisation improve significantly following the transition from a transactional to a transformational leader.