How CEOs protect themselves against dismissal: A social status perspective |
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| Authors: | Miriam Flickinger Markus Wrage Anja Tuschke Rudi Bresser |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Munich School of Management, Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universit?t München, Munich, Germany;2. School of Business and Economics, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Berlin, Germany |
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| Abstract: | ![]()
In this study, we address the question of why some CEOs stay in office during a performance downturn while others don't. Taking a social status perspective, we argue that an individual's board network embeddedness—as reflected in the number of outside directorships—plays an important role in dismissal decisions. We predict that a high status of the CEO relative to the chairman of the board protects an underperforming CEO against dismissal, while the relative salience of board network outsiders can counter this effect. Using longitudinal data of large German corporations, we find support for our predictions. Ltd. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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| Keywords: | CEO dismissal social status board interlocks outside directors corporate elite |
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