The Strategic and Performance Consequences of CEO Succession

The argument of this paper (with Nitin Nohria) is that research on executive turnover treats the departures of predecessors and the origin of successors as independent events. This approach has led to mixed empirical findings with respect to measuring the effects of executive turnover on firm performance. Using a panel data set, we show that the conditions under which the predecessor departs (forced versus natural turnover) and the origin of the successor (insider versus outsider) are theoretically coupled phenomena with distinct combinations leading to differences in subsequent performance.