Bolstering the female CEO pipeline: Equalizing the playing field and igniting women’s potential as top-level leaders

Females represent just 6% of Fortune 500 CEOs in the U.S. Which competencies, traits, motivations, and experiences drive female CEOs to the corner office? Our study includes interviews with 57 women, all current and former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, in an effort to explore the common characteristics of female CEOs and record their experiences as well as actions organizations took that supported—and hindered—their leadership ascents. We found common themes of female CEOs’ courage, risk taking, resilience, and ability to manage ambiguity. Women need not shy away from tough and unpredictable job assignments that will build these characteristics. To this end, we suggest steps organizations should take to cultivate a robust pipeline of female talent in the workplace.     

CEO personality and language use in CSR reporting

We explore the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) personality traits and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. Upper echelons theory indicates that the values, experiences, and personalities of top organizational managers influence their organization's strategic decisions and effectiveness. We utilize IBM Watson Personality Insights software to infer CEOs’ personality traits based on their responses to questions raised by analysts during year-end conference calls; we obtain CEOs’ Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—from which we compute a measure of their risk tolerance. Using a longitudinal dataset of Standard and Poor's 500 firms for 2008–2015, we document that high CEO risk tolerance is related to lower CSR report readability and smaller CSR disclosure volume. This finding indicates that executives who are comfortable with greater risk are more willing to supply stakeholders with reports that are shorter and require greater effort to understand. Exploration of the association between CEO Big Five personality traits and CSR report readability and disclosure volume allows key stakeholders to better comprehend CSR disclosures and connotations thereof. Overall, our results contribute to the debate on how CEO personality traits affect organizations’ CSR disclosure reporting strategies, and support upper echelons theory in the CSR setting.     

Who really cares about the environment? CEOs’ military service experience and firms’ investment in environmental protection

Prior literature suggests that the chief executive officer (CEO) plays a significant role in a firm's environmental performance or voluntary pro‐environmental behaviors; we extend this line of research to examine the effect of CEOs’ military service experience on firms’ investment in environmental protection. Drawing upon the insights of imprinting theory, we argue that military service experience may instill in CEOs pro‐environmental values such as duty, self‐discipline, self‐sacrifice, and sense of community, which motivate them to adopt pro‐environmental behaviors such as investing more resources in environmental protection. However, we argue that the effects of pro‐environmental values imprinted on CEOs through military service are likely to vary across regions. In regions where the market is more developed and the local value system has experienced greater exposure to the impact of foreign values, and in regions where firms are more concerned about profit, this effect is likely to be attenuated. An analysis of three waves of a nationwide survey of private firms in China using the Tobit regression model supports these predictions. This study makes a unique contribution to the existing literature by linking a firm's pro‐environmental behaviors (i.e., environmental protection investment) to its CEO’s experiences in early life (i.e., military service experience).     

The emergence of co‐existing debt cycle regimes in an economic growth model

This paper aims to provide a modeling framework that keeps track of the interdependency between firms’ external financing structure and the state of the economy. Accordingly, it is based on the well‐known Kaleckian model which is combined with a modeling strategy of a sentiment index that was proposed by Franke (2012, 2014). The sentiment influences firms’ subjective sales expectations and thus their planned level of investment. As it turns out, the non‐linear model set‐up appears to be flexible in the sense that it is able to generate different interesting dynamic scenarios. It is shown that it may produce (a) sentiment‐driven business cycle fluctuations, including endogenously determined Minsky‐Koo‐kind recessions, and, more interestingly, (b) two distinct economic environments that exist contemporaneously: a ‘low‐’ and ‘high‐indebted’ regime.     

How and when taking pictures undermines the enjoyment of experiences

The consumption of experiences (as opposed to products) has seen an increasing amount of research attention in recent years. A key aspect of the experiential consumption journey is how the experience is consumed. For instance, people almost invariably take pictures during highly enjoyable experiences such as vacations or important family events. Although past research has suggested that taking pictures may enhance the enjoyment of moderately enjoyable experiences, the effect of picture taking on the real‐time enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences is not clear. To address this matter, the authors investigate whether taking pictures affects consumers’ enjoyment of highly enjoyable hedonic experiences. A series of laboratory studies demonstrate that taking pictures (compared with not taking pictures) can decrease enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences. This study suggests that, by constantly striving to document their experiences, consumers may unwittingly fail to enjoy those experiences to the fullest. These results have implications for how firms may best stage experiential offerings to enhance their customers’ experiences.     

War-experienced CEOs and corporate policies: Evidence from the Korean war

We investigate the relationship between traumatic war experiences of chief executive officers (CEOs) and their corporate decisions. Using the Korean war event, we find that CEOs exposed to the war in their earlier lives tend to be conservative in corporate policies. Among the war-experienced CEOs, we also find that those who have witnessed large-scale massacres exhibit more conservative behavior. Moreover, war-experienced CEOs make more conservative decisions during a period of financial crisis or when they have ownership. In summary, our results show that early-life exposure to traumatic experiences significantly induces CEOs to be risk-averse.     

Founder CEOs,personal incentives,and corporate social irresponsibility

This study integrates organizational identity (OI) theory and upper echelons theory to explore the impact of CEOs’ founder status on corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We theorize that compared with other CEOs, a founder CEO is more likely to generate a high degree of OI with the firm, which will drive the founder CEO to actively avoid CSI that may damage the positive image and long-term development of the firm. Furthermore, we argue that CEO duality and CEO ownership will strengthen the aforementioned relationship by increasing the possibility of founder CEOs generating a high degree of OI. Conversely, CEO underpayment will weaken the relationship between founder status and CSI by decreasing the possibility of founder CEOs generating a high degree of OI. We obtained empirical evidence in support of our arguments from a large Chinese private listed company dataset. Overall, this study’s theory and evidence clearly show that founder status and personal incentives can jointly shape CEOs’ CSI decisions, thereby providing useful insights for corporate shareholders and government agencies to better prevent and govern firms’ CSI.     

Not Good,Not Bad: The Effect of Family Control on Environmental Performance Disclosure by Business Group Firms

In this study, we examine the influence of senior leadership on firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). We integrate upper echelons research that has investigated either the influence of the CEO or the top management team (TMT) on CSR. We contend that functional experience complementarity between CEOs and TMTs in formulating and implementing CSR strategy may underlie differentiated strategies in CSR. We find that when CEOs who have predominant experience in output functions are complemented by TMTs with a lower proportion of members who have experience in output functions, there is a pronounced effect on the community, product, and diversity dimensions of CSR. In turn, when output-oriented CEOs are complemented by output-oriented TMTs, we observe an effect on the employee relations dimension of CSR. Interestingly, we find no influence of CEO-TMT complementarity on the environment dimension of CSR. In general, our empirical results support the relevance of the interaction between CEOs and their TMTs in defining their firms’ CSR profile.     

Revisiting the Effect of Family Involvement on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Behavioral Agency Perspective

This paper sheds light on the incongruent findings concerning the relationship between family involvement and firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). While prior studies have mainly taken the perspective of families’ socioemotional wealth preservation, we approach this relationship from the perspective of behavioral agency theory, highlighting the important role played by CEOs’ family memberships. Specifically, we posit that family firms are more likely to invest in CSR when their CEOs are members of the controlling families. Furthermore, we examine how family firms can employ long-term incentives to encourage non-family CEOs to act in the interests of the controlling families to preserve SEW and thus enhancing family firms’ CSR performance. We tested our hypotheses using hand-collected data of family firms included in the S&P 500 index, in the period of 2003–2010. The empirical findings support our hypotheses that (a) family firms with family members as the CEOs have better CSR performance and (b) family firms tend to provide a high level of long-term incentives to non-family than family CEOs. In addition, long-term incentives strongly motivate CEOs to improve firms’ CSR performance, regardless of their family memberships.     

Political Affiliation and Pay Slice: Do Blue CEOs Accept Less Green?

We examine the relationship among CEO political alignment, compensation, and pay disparity (relative to other high‐earning executives) and find that Democratic CEOs accept less pay and a significantly lower pay slice. That is, left‐leaning CEOs put their money where their mouth is regarding the Democratic ideology of economic and social equity. This smaller pay gap is not a function of variations in managerial ability; if anything, Democratic CEOs are more talented than Republican CEOs. Results suggest that Democratic CEOs may be more effective at running firms in which collaboration among top executives is more valuable than are the potential gains from tournament incentives.     

Just about money? CEO satisfaction and firm performance in small family firms

This paper examines how family ownership and family ties influence the relative importance of economic and non-economic goals on the CEO’s satisfaction with the firm. Using a sample of small high-tech family and non-family firms, we show that the influence of past firm economic performance on CEO satisfaction is weaker in the case of CEOs leading a family firm. Our results also suggest that this influence becomes weaker as the family firm transitions into subsequent generations. However, contrary to our expectations, we were not able to find a differential effect of firm performance on CEO satisfaction between CEOs who belong to the controlling family and those who do not.     

Conflicts and Regrets in the Venture Capitalist–Entrepreneur Relationship

The goal of this paper is to examine whether conflicts with venture capitalists (VCs) could prompt chief executive officers (CEOs) to experience regret of action (regarding their poor partner choice) or regret of inaction (regarding their own inability to avert conflict). We argue that it is important to examine such feelings of regret that could motivate CEOs to change their financial intermediation and collaboration strategies in the future. We propose that VCs and CEOs may experience two types of conflict: (1) pacing conflicts regarding the direction and speed of venture advancement driven by perceived inequities in economic and social exchange; and (2) prerogative conflicts about the allocation of control rights and relationship issues driven by the perceived inequities in power relations. We hypothesize that pacing conflicts will be related to increasingly intense prerogative conflicts, whereas the latter will be associated with both types of CEO regret. The proposed model is tested with structural equation modeling techniques applied to the data collected from104 CEOs of VC‐backed ventures. All the hypotheses are supported. Our main finding is that CEOs appear to be ambivalent about their conflict with VCs, regretting both their prior choices as an error of judgment (regret of action) and their own lack of initiative (regret of inaction).     

Falling in love with brands: a dynamic analysis of the trajectories of brand love

This article presents a study designed to investigate and map the trajectories of brand love. Consumers described experiences related to the initiation and evolution of their relationships with their most loved brand. Participants were asked to graphically trace the course of their feelings toward their currently most loved brand and to recall the events that influenced those feelings. The paths toward brand love followed five distinct trajectories, labeled as “slow development,” “liking becomes love,” “love all the way,” “bumpy road,” and “turnabout.” The formative experiences shaping these trajectories often include individual, personal, and private experiences that are largely outside any marketer’s control.     

Inventor Chief Executive Officers and Firm Innovation

Using a novel, manually collected dataset, we find that firms whose chief executive officer (CEO) is an inventor experience significantly better innovation outcomes, as measured by patents and future citations. We obtain these results in models with firm fixed effects, in difference‐in‐difference analysis of transitioning CEOs that controls for the CEO fixed effects, and among firms with founder CEOs. Firms led by an inventor CEO also exhibit greater tolerance for failure as indicated by a greater number of both highly cited and uncited patents, and engage more in explorative search strategies that exploit new technological trajectories. Stock market, however, seems unable to fully capture the positive impact of inventor CEOs on future innovation: firms whose CEO transitions to be an inventor experience positive abnormal stock returns, especially during the early years following the transition.     

Implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements: Problems for Developing Countries

Unilateral removal of trade restrictions is good economics, but it is often bad domestic politics. GATT negotiations for 50 years provided a mechanism to overcome this political incorrectness. The Uruguay Round carried multilateral negotiations into many ‘new areas’ with more complex economics – areas of regulation that establish the basic business environment in the domestic economy, e.g., technical, sanitary and phytosanitary standards; intellectual property law. Doing these things is costly and you can get it wrong – the economic correctness is not so simple as the economic correctness of removing trade restrictions. Making economic sense in these areas requires cost‐benefit analysis, experimentation, projects tailored to specific problems. Some developing countries would benefit from reforms in the new areas, but the Uruguay Round requirements do not identify the problems that exist in developing countries and they consequently demand establishment of institutions and regulations that will impose higher costs than benefits on the countries that implement them. Implementation issues are development issues, not trade issues. The procedures of the World Bank are suited to taking on such matters, those of the WTO are not.     

The social market economy: an export for the Third World?

Long before the socialist industrialized nations began to call their centrally planned, or government controlled, economies into question, policymakers in many developing countries with dirigistic, interventionist systems, including capitalist oriented ones, had started to rethink their economic philosophies. Now that the former exporters of the concept of the centrally planned economy are themselves interested in importing free-enterprise ideas, reform in the Third World is likely to take on more momentum and interest in the social market economy will increase.     

Services policy reform and manufacturing employment: Evidence from transition economies

Policy reforms targeting the services sectors are a neglected dimension of the process of structural transformation and economic development. The effects of such reforms on employment across industries as a function of their use of services as intermediate inputs are theoretically ambiguous and remain largely understudied. This paper uses sector‐level data for 24 transition economies for the 1990–2012 period to assess the impacts of services policy reforms on downstream manufacturing employment. We find a negative effect of services reforms on manufacturing sector employment. This is mostly associated with the process of transition to a market‐based economy. Controlling for transition‐specific dynamics, the data suggest a neutral effect of progress towards adopting “best practice” policies for upstream services on employment in downstream manufacturing. Furthermore, in line with the extant literature, we confirm that services policy reforms enhance productivity of downstream manufacturing industries. Finally, we find that the negative effects on downstream employment are mitigated in countries with better economic governance and human capital.     

Economic Partnership Agreements Between Sub‐Saharan Africa and the EU: A Development Perspective

This paper draws on Hinkle and Schiff (2003). It analyses the planned Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) from a development perspective. It does not take a position on whether SSA should enter into EPAs with the EU. Rather, it starts from the notion that the process of forming EPAs is unlikely to be reversed and examines the conditions that will maximise SSA's benefits from the EPAs. If this notion is correct, then the analysis presented in the paper applies. On the other hand, Pascal Lamy, the EU Trade Commissioner, made a proposal at the May 2004 G‐90 summit in Dakar that might lead to a change in the EPA process. He proposed that the G‐90, a group consisting of ACP and non‐ACP LDC countries, should not have to make concessions at the WTO Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, i.e., he proposed a ‘free round’ for the G‐90. This proposal opens the door to the possibility that the same might apply to the ACP countries in the EU‐ACP negotiations and that the EPA process might be reversed. The paper considers the key issues raised by the planned EPAs, their relationship to the WTO's Doha Round and the EU's Everything‐but‐Arms Initiative, the changes needed to make the EPAs internally consistent, the domestic reforms in SSA that would need to accompany trade liberalisation in both goods and services, and the potential effects of the EPAs on regional integration in SSA. The EPAs will pose a number of policy challenges for SSA countries, including: restructuring of indirect tax systems, reduction of MFN tariffs, liberalisation of service imports on an MFN basis and related regulatory reforms in the services sector, and liberalisation of trade in both goods and services within the regional trading blocs in SSA. The paper also finds that the EPAs provide an opportunity to accelerate regional and global trade integration in SSA. To realise the potential development benefits of the planned EPAs, two steps are essential. First, the EU must, as it has stated, truly treat the EPAs as instruments of development, subordinating its commercial interests in the agreements to the development needs of SSA. Second, the SSA countries need to implement a number of EPA‐related trade policy reforms. However, the latter is far from certain, given the lack of reform momentum in SSA.     

Editorial

This article examines the moderating effect of institutional distance on the relation between personal experiences of chief executive officers (CEOs) and entry mode choice. Hypotheses are tested with data on 156 foreign direct investments made by west-European multinational enterprises in 10 central and eastern European economies in the 1992–2002 period of transition. Two demographic features are examined: CEOs’ age and international experience. The results provide support for the theory that the impact of CEOs’ experiences on the entry mode choice is conditional on the institutional distance between home and host countries.     

Analysing consumers' ‘activism’ in response to rising prices

The purpose of this paper was to compose the profile of active consumers in Greece during a period of rising prices taking into account shifts in their consumption. A survey was conducted from 1 September 2008 to 21 November 2008 to collect the primary data source for the study. Questionnaires were administered to 200 consumers. To our knowledge this was the first attempt to offer insight into the characteristics of the Greek consumer in a period of economic crisis. For this purpose, econometric analysis was employed. Empirical results suggested that high‐income groups spend more for food commodities and are less likely to be active consumers. It was concluded that consumers have reduced spending for some basic and semi‐luxury products like fruits, meat, alcohol, sweets and coffee, and entertainment activities. The main factor which affected the reaction to price increases, as expected, was the monthly private income. Twenty per cent of the consumers are members of a national consumer movement organization, and support their actions against rising prices. Women, who research the market before purchasing a product, are more likely than men to participate in economic boycotts. By examining the profile of non‐active consumers and the reasons for their behaviour, we are able to propose a policy for the activation of the Greek consumer movement, which is necessary for the consumers' resistance to rising prices. Taking into consideration that Greek consumers face increased prices for food commodities and services, a policy framework to activate consumers is among the main prerequisites for maintaining consumers' well being. We suggest that the Greek Consumer Protection Institutes should regain consumers' confidence and focus on the dissemination of information about organized economic boycotts.