What's all that (strategic) noise? anticipatory impression management in CEO succession

We develop and test a novel theory about strategic noise with regard to CEO appointments. Strategic noise is an anticipatory and preemptive form of impression management. At the time it announces a new CEO, a board of directors seeks to manage stakeholder impressions by simultaneously releasing confounding information about other significant events. Several CEO and firm characteristics affect the likelihood that this will happen. Strategic noise is most likely when long‐term CEOs have a wide pay gap between other top managers at high stock price performance firms, and when a new CEO does not have previous CEO experience or comes from a less well‐regarded firm. Results showing that CEO succession announcements are noisier than they would be by chance have some interesting implications for impression management theory, traditional event study methodology, and managerial and public policy. Interviews with public firm directors on CEO succession provide additional validity for the strategic noise construct and help us to articulate key elements of the theory. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Throwing caution to the wind: The effect of CEO stock option pay on the incidence of product safety problems

Stock options are thought to align the interests of CEOs and shareholders, but scholars have shown that options sometimes lead to outcomes that run counter to what they are meant to achieve. Building on this research, we argue that options promote a lack of caution in CEOs that manifests in a higher incidence of product safety problems. We also posit that this relationship varies across CEOs, and that the effect of options will depend upon CEO characteristics such as tenure and founder status. Analyzing product recall data for a large sample of FDA‐regulated companies, we find support for our theory. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CEO performance evaluation systems: empirical findings from the Italian health service

This paper examines the way that the performance of chief executive officers of Italian healthcare organizations is evaluated. The aim is to analyse the extent of the use of New Public Management techniques in the highly regionalized and political Italian healthcare sector. A positive association was found between formal CEO performance evaluation systems and the quality of regional governance. There was no significant relationship between formal CEO performance evaluation and the duration of CEO tenure.     

The differing effects of agent and founder CEOs on the firm's market expansion

This paper builds and tests the thesis that CEO influence evolves differently for founders and agents. We theorize that at the beginning of their tenures, founder CEOs can pursue market expansion more aggressively than agent CEOs, because they take office with the combination of motivation, power, and requisite knowledge that agent CEOs build over time. Subsequently, however, founder CEOs have less access to the administrative infrastructure necessary to sustain a growing firm, making them less able than agent CEOs to continue market expansion mid‐tenure and more severely constrained by market complexity. A longitudinal study of cable television operators confirms that the firm's market expansion follows an inverted U‐shape for agents and a downward slope for founders, while market complexity reduces market expansion, especially for founders. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How national systems differ in their constraints on corporate executives: a study of CEO effects in three countries

Do CEOs matter more in some countries than in others? Based on a theoretical consideration of three fundamental national‐level institutions—national values, prevailing firm ownership structures, and board governance arrangements—we argue that CEOs in different countries face systematically different degrees of constraint on their latitudes of action, and hence they differ in how much effect they have on firm performance. To test these ideas, we apply a variance components analysis methodology to 15‐year matched samples of 100 U.S. firms, 100 German firms, and 100 Japanese firms. Results provide strong, robust evidence that the effect of CEOs on firm performance—for good and for ill—is substantially greater in U.S. firms than in German and Japanese firms. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate divestitures and family control

This paper investigates the relationship between divestitures and firm value in family firms. Using hand‐collected data on a sample of over 30,000 firm‐year observations, we find that family firms are less likely than non‐family firms to undertake divestitures, especially when these companies are managed by family rather than non‐family‐CEOs. However, we then establish that the divestitures undertaken by family firms, predominantly those run by family‐CEOs, are associated with higher post‐divestiture performance than their non‐family counterparts. These findings indicate that family firms may fail to fully exploit available economic opportunities, potentially because they pursue multiple objectives beyond the maximization of shareholder value. These results also elucidate how the characteristics of corporate owners and managers can influence the value that firms derive from their corporate strategies. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How much do CEOs really matter? Reaffirming that the CEO effect is mostly due to chance

How much of the variance in firm performance can be attributed to CEOs? This question has been the focus of a long debate in management research. In a recent study, I showed that a large portion of the performance differences that are often attributed to CEOs might in fact be due to chance. In a recent article, Quigley and Graffin argue that my conclusions can be avoided if more advanced methodological approaches are applied. Here I show that this is not the case, in fact if more realistic assumptions of how chance can affect firm performance are made, the effect of CEO leadership is almost indistinguishable from the effect of chance, independent of the estimation methodology. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why B-to-B CEOs Should Be More Social on Social Media

In the era of social media more is demanded of CEOs to project a charismatic and personable public face for the company. Aside from their executive duties, CEOs are now called upon to perform this important 'personal marketing' role through their active engagement on social media. Yet studies show that CEOs, especially those of B-to-B companies, are often reluctant to perform this function – less than 50% have any significant social media presence. All the same, it is evident that social media offers numerous benefits to CEOs both at firm and personal levels: greater transparency and trust, connecting with the public, engendering the perception of authenticity, and brand-building. Additionally, millennials, as an influential demographic group, practically expect corporate CEOs to be available to communicate on social media. This practitioner note concludes with recommendations for CEOs who are venturing into the social media space for the first time.     

A decade of corporate women: some progress in the boardroom,none in the executive suite

This study examines the extent to which women have circumvented the glass ceiling by empirically examining whether there has been an increase in women’s representation on corporate boards and CEO positions over the 10‐year period from 1987 to 1996. Results indicate greatly increased representation on corporate boards. There is, however, no evidence of progress in, or towards, the CEO suite. Moreover, there is no evidence of that circumstance abating in the next several years. The number of female inside directors, an intermediate, and requisite, position in the succession to CEO, is astonishingly small, only 0.006 percent. Notably, there has been no increase in that proportion over the last decade. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Overconfidence,CEO Awards,and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness

Theory and prior research suggest that overconfidence leads managers to overestimate their own ability to generate returns, leading to riskier corporate policies. We use a novel dataset of media awards as an exogenous shock to overconfidence to test whether award‐winning CEOs adopt more aggressive corporate tax policies. Using propensity score matching and a difference‐in‐difference design, we find strong evidence that firms with an award‐winning CEO exhibit significantly greater tax aggressiveness following the award. Overall, our results suggest that CEO overconfidence has a meaningful impact on corporate tax policy.