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This paper aims to investigate an interesting yet mostly ignored distinction within external CEO successions: outside successors who have previous CEO experience and those who do not. It examines stock market reaction, compensation and firm performance prior and post‐succession.

The authors used an event study, “Patell Z‐statistic” and “Rank Z‐statistic” to test cumulative abnormal return before and after the successions. They also used probit and OLS regressions to examine firm performance and CEO compensation prior and post‐succession.

The authors find that the stock market reacts positively to the hiring of an outsider who is an exCEO. Compared with firms that hire non‐exCEOs, firms that hire exCEOs had higher debt ratios and greater bankruptcy chances pre‐succession, but post‐succession, these firms still have worse financial performances. Non‐exCEOs come from better performing firms than exCEOs. There is no consistently significant difference in compensation between an exCEO and a non‐exCEO, though the compensation for both increases significantly from that of the predecessors and that of their previous positions.

Future research could focus on the cost‐benefit tradeoff of hiring an exCEO. It would be interesting to examine the role of the board of directors in assessing this cost‐benefit tradeoff and determining the optimal choice for the firm. An important aspect that has not been sufficiently examined in the literature is the CEO fit. Hiring an exCEO may not always be the right choice for the firm. Another area for future research could examine how the post‐succession performance is affected by exCEO tenure in previous CEO position(s) and whether the exCEO worked in several industries or in the same industry.

This paper also has implications for the board of directors. There seems to be a negative transfer of human capital when it comes to hiring exCEOs. The human capital theory suggests that job‐specific experience positively relates to job performance. According to Hamori and Koyuncu, prior CEO experience may “lead to the formation of knowledge corridors and decision‐making templates that make it difficult for individuals to take in inconsistent information or take actions that are different from past ones in a changed context. This, in turn, undermines performance”. Boards of directors should put more effort into considering inside relay successions and should be cautious when hiring an outsider who has prior CEO experience. A best‐of‐both‐worlds scenario may be for boards to hire exCEOs into top executive positions, such as COO and/or president, so as to give them a chance to be groomed for the top position and familiarize themselves with the firm while still benefiting from their prior CEO experience.

There is very little research on the distinction between outside CEOs with previous CEO experience and those with no such experience. This paper tries to shed some light on this important issue in corporate governance in order to explain why boards of directors would hire an outsider with or without previous CEO experience.

Accounting scandals and earnings management problems at large firms such as Global Crossing and Enron have resulted in lots of wealth loss not only to corporate investors but also led tremendous damage to societies. Hence, policymakers and academic researchers have started to explore mechanisms to prevent improprieties in financial reporting and further enhance firm value. Using data from United States (US)-listed companies between 2000 and 2018, this article explores the effect of ex-military executives on earnings quality, the role of financial analysts in their interplay and the firm value implication of earnings quality driven by ex-military executives.

This study employs a firm fixed-effects model to validate the main conjecture and adopts the weighted least squares, Granger causality analysis, instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching, entropy balancing approach and dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address robustness and endogeneity issues.

Authors reveal that companies run by ex-military senior executives exhibit lower levels of accruals-based and real earnings management than those without. The effect of management military leadership on constraining earnings management is more prominent for companies with low analyst coverage, suggesting that the military experience of executives could be a substitute for external monitoring. Authors also find that these ethical managers alleviate the negative impact of earnings management on firm value and that companies managed by these managers exhibit higher firm performance.

This study highlights the importance of the intrinsic motivation behind the effect of military experience on senior managers' personalities and offers essential stakeholder-related implications regarding the effect of military experience. The military experience of senior managers helps facilitate the attainment of broader corporate governance and economic objectives.

This article adds new insights to the literature on the role of managerial military experience in decision-making processes, financial reporting outcomes and firm performance by employing the upper echelons and imprinting theoretical perspectives.

The article investigates the patterns of asset impairment recognition in search of signs of “big bath” earnings management practices across an internationally diversified sample of public companies. It also elucidates the incentives that may underlie such practices and explores possible safeguards embedded in the existing corporate governance mechanisms.

The article applied static panel and binary logit models to an international firm-level panel dataset of 1045 public companies observed between 2003 and 2018.

Our empirical results suggest that recognition of asset impairment has no determinate impact on earnings volatility. Investigating the possibility of “big bath” earnings management practices, the authors found no impact of asset impairment recognition on total senior executive compensation in firms, which pay performance-based remuneration. The quality of corporate governance has appeared to impact the firms’ intertemporal proclivity to recognize asset impairment with those having the more entrenched and management-controlled boards being more likely to time impairment recognition by delaying it during exceptionally good and exceptionally bad years. While generally unlikely, recognition of asset impairment in a period with a recorded negative operating performance is found to be closely associated with key executive departures.

The article corroborates the salient role of corporate governance mechanisms in shaping the intertemporal patterns of asset impairment recognition. The possible remedies to the phenomenon should be derived therefrom.