Effects of CEO duality and tenure on innovation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-552
Author(s):  
Mengge Li ◽  
Jinxin Yang

Purpose As the primary decision makers, chief executive officers (CEOs) play pivotal roles in firm innovation. However, little is known regarding how CEOs influence the exploitation and exploration paradox. To advance theory and research, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint effects of CEO tenure and CEO–chair duality on a firm’s shifting emphasis between exploitative and exploratory innovation. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes the approach of a longitudinal sample of 81 US pharmaceutical firms. Findings As CEOs’ tenure advance, their firms’ percentage of exploitative innovation increases. Furthermore, non-duality (separation of board chair and CEO) further strengthens the positive relationship between CEO tenure and the percentage of exploitative innovation. Research limitations/implications This study integrates upper echelons theory and behavioral agency theory to juxtapose the effects of CEOs on technological innovation. This study extends knowledge of strategic leadership and innovation by showing that CEOs influence the balance between exploitative and exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this study also contributes to the corporate governance literature by demonstrating that monitoring vigilance could inhibit capable CEOs from pursuing more exploratory innovation. Practical implications Boards of directors should allow CEOs to have greater discretion over innovation, and vigilant monitoring and control may force CEOs to focus less on exploration. Originality/value This is one of the few studies that explicitly investigate how CEO influences a firm’s emphasis on exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation.

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jibriel Elsayih ◽  
Rina Datt ◽  
Ali Hamid

Purpose Research suggests that chief executive officers (CEOs) play an important role in enhancing a firm’s legitimacy with regard to environmental performance. The purpose of this paper is to use the upper echelons theory and stakeholder theory to investigate whether the characteristics of CEOs are associated with carbon performance (CP). Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a sample of 128 firm-year observations from Australian companies that participated in the carbon disclosure project from 2011 through 2014. Findings Two-stage least squares estimation reveals that CEO executive experience and CEO duality are positively associated with CP. By contrast, CEO tenure, CEO functional background experience and CEO industry experience are negatively related to CP, and CEO ownership is not related to CP. Practical implications The results might provide evidence for investors, policymakers and regulators with respect to the effectiveness of CEO characteristics for addressing carbon risks and possible linkages between CEO characteristics and carbon emission levels. In addition, the results give support CEO accountability regarding the carbon emissions. Originality/value This study provides the first empirical evidence of the impact of CEO characteristics on CP. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by showing how the characteristics of CEOs can impact corporate CP and provides a more in-depth understanding of whether such characteristics play important roles in determining corporate carbon action.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Santora

Purpose This paper aims to raise the level of awareness of the critical need to have a chief executive succession plan in nonprofit organizations. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a review of survey literature to determine the degree to which nonprofits plan for chief executive succession. Findings The findings reveal a serious lack of planning for successors in nonprofit organizations. Originality/value This paper underscores the need for a three-pronged approach by nonprofit boards of directors, chief executive officers, and HR departments to address planning for successors to prevent potential chaotic organizational situations and create sustainable nonprofits.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 670-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Voss ◽  
Mayoor Mohan

Purpose The purpose of the this paper is to correct a deficiency in the published literature by examining the share price performance of firms that own high-value brands in uptrending, downtrending and sideways markets. Design/methodology/approach The authors examined stock price performance for an index of firms that owned brands in the Interbrand list of the “Best Global Brands” from 2001 through 2009 using the Fama-French method. Findings The authors’ index outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 when the market was up or downtrending, but not when it moved sideways. Research limitations/implications The authors find that an index of firms that own the produced better returns than the Standard & Poor’s 500 market index. Owning highly valued brands may be a marketplace signal to the investing community regarding the firm’s management acumen. Practical implications Owning high-value brands seems to influence share price performance, a metric used to judge chief executive officers. Thus, brand investments align with the shareholders’ interest. The authors help alleviate the perception (Challagalla et al., 2014) that marketing managers make investments on an ad hoc basis. Originality/value For the first time, the authors evaluate the effect of owning one or more of the world’s most valuable brands on the market value of common stock using data from downtrending, uptrending and no-trend periods. This research is also among the first to introduce volatility into the Fama-French method and it is an important explanatory variable. This paper’s approach has interesting comparisons to other papers taking a similar analytical approach.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Rosenberg

Abstract While many firms today routinely publish sustainability reports, work to increase their energy efficiency and market some part of their products or services to customers who are in some way interested in their environmental performance, there still appears to be a general lack of engagement on the issue of the environment from Chief Executive Officers and members of Boards of Directors. Despite years of effort and thousands of scholarly articles, academia has yet to develop a compelling framework with which to engage Senior Management. The article proposes such a framework based on an idea called environmental sensibility and the degree of compliance a firm chooses to pursue.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Mary Meldrum

PurposeThe overwhelming frequency of failure in trying to bring a safe and effective biotech, pharmaceutical or medical device product to market is truly astounding. This research synthesizes industry leaders' insights on lessons learned from reflecting on professional disappointments.Design/methodology/approachThis research used a qualitative approach to learning from the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Scientific Officers (CSOs) and Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) of the most successful life science firms in the USA. A total of 45 industry leaders were interviewed regarding their lingering regrets about their career misadventures.FindingsRegrets were unavoidable because there were opportunity costs for every choice each leader made. Commentary about wisdom gained comprised themes regarding valuable time lost, strategies that could have been enacted, products that failed and essential personnel who were not managed optimally. Contrary to expectations, there was little mention of money that was squandered.Originality/valueNot felt as a solely negative emotion, regrets were recognized by these leaders as a potentially positive influence on their future decisions. Not felt as a solely negative emotion, regret was recognized by these leaders as a potentially positive influence on their future decisions. This exploratory study suggests that learning from retrospective and anticipated regrets benefits life science leaders in gaining clarity of thought regarding their current business challenges. Because prior research on the value of psychological regrets has mostly relied on limited samples, this inquiry contributes a new vantage point by examining a unique population of senior business leaders, thus providing broader applicability to the organizational literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pyemo Afego ◽  
Imhotep Alagidede

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how citizen protests against perceived acts of racial injustice impact on share prices of companies who weigh in on the protests. In particular, corporate statements that directly address the issues around the protests are identified and possible mechanisms underlying how these may impact shareholder value are discussed. Design/methodology/approach The authors first use a qualitative research approach of content and sentiment analysis to track how companies or their chief executive officers (CEOs) present their stance against racial injustice, as represented by their use of linguistic markers. Then, the authors use an event study methodology to assess the response from stock market participants. Findings The findings suggest that CEOs primarily convey their stance using language that is emotive and empathic. In addition, shareholders earn a significant abnormal return of 2.13%, on average, in the three days following the release of the statements. Research limitations/implications This study considered only US-listed companies. The sample size, also, is relatively small. Institutional and cultural differences across countries may also vary. Thus, future research could explore the extent to which the findings generalize to other contexts. Practical implications Results provide insights to top managers who communicate with various stakeholders on emotionally charged social issues. Findings also offer insights on the timing of trades for investors and arbitrageurs. Social implications Findings contribute to the understanding of corporate behaviour in times of social upheaval. Insights from the study may also be used to inform corporate communication decisions about important social issues. Originality/value This study brings into focus the role that affective appeal and moral emotion can play in evoking motivation for corporate activism, and the impact that this has on investor opinions’ formation process.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luqman Oyekunle Oyewobi ◽  
Abimbola Oluwakemi Windapo ◽  
Rotimi Olabode Bamidele James

Purpose – The essence of strategy formulation is to assist an organisation obtain a strategic fit with its environment and help enhance organisational continuous improvement in achieving performance excellence. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the type of competitive strategies used by construction organisations in attaining their strategic goals in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach – The study employs an inductive research approach using a well-structured questionnaire to elicit information from large construction organisations based in South Africa. Findings – The research identifies five strategic attributes that could assist organisations to grow their businesses and enhance their returns. It reveals that all Porters’ generic competitive strategies are significantly related to organisational financial performance measures except focus strategy. The research found that three generic competitive strategies are positively related to non-financial performance and that differentiation and cost-leadership strategies are capable of assisting organisations’ achieve their financial performance goals. Practical implications – The study results will be of immense benefit to chief executive officers as well as managers of construction organisations in growing their businesses and enhancing their corporate performance. Originality/value – The paper contributes both theoretically and empirically to the current discussion and findings on competitive strategy and its relationship with organisational performance. The results presented in the paper have important implications for the implementation of competitive strategies in construction companies and future studies in the area of strategic management.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 1603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soo Yeon Park ◽  
Kwan Hee Yoo

This paper investigates the relation between Chief Executive Officers (CEO) career concerns and voluntary disclosures using listed firm (KOSPI) data in Korea. Prior research suggests that explicit incentives in the form of CEO stock-based compensation or CEO’s equity ownership mitigate the agency problems of reluctance to make voluntary disclosure. In addition, implicit incentives arising from CEO career concerns are as important as explicit incentives for mitigating agency problems.The labor market assesses CEOs ability and CEO reputation in the market is a valuable asset that is associated with many long-term benefits, such as better future compensation, reappointment in the position, and greater managerial autonomy. CEOs are concerned about such an assessment and these concerns are referred to as career concerns. However, the market has incomplete information about CEOs’ ability especially when the CEOs have short tenures as a CEO position. Hence, CEOs with short tenures have more strong incentives to signal their ability to the labor market so that they can build proper reputation.Implicit incentives arising from CEO career concerns are measured by CEO tenure. I assume that short-tenured CEOs are more career-concerned than long-tenured CEOs. I find that CEOs with short tenures tend to more likely disclose management forecasts. I interpret this result that more career-concerned CEOs have strong incentives to signal their ability to the labor market in order to build their reputations which affect their future payoffs such as compensations and reappointment. In addition, management forecasts, means of voluntary disclosure, are used as effective mechanism. I also find that CEOs with short tenures tend to disclose more accurate management forecasts. This result implies that CEOs with more career concerns have more pressure to provide accurate forecasts because of their reliability in the labor market. Based on these empirical results, I infer that CEOs’ implicit incentives affect their voluntary disclosure decision.This study will contribute to academics and disclosure-related practitioners by documenting about CEOs’ career concerns and their voluntary disclosure decisions.


Author(s):  
Herman Aguinis ◽  
Geoffrey P. Martin ◽  
Luis R. Gomez-Mejia ◽  
Ernest H. O’Boyle ◽  
Harry Joo

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which chief executive officers (CEOs) deserve the pay they receive both in terms of over and underpayment. Design/methodology/approach Rather than using the traditional normal distribution view in which CEO performance clusters around the mean with relatively little variance, the authors adopt a novel power law approach. They studied 22 industries and N = 4,158 CEO-firm combinations for analyses based on Tobin’s Q and N = 5,091 for analyses based on return on assets. Regarding compensation, they measured the CEO distribution based on total compensation and three components of CEO total pay: salary, bonus, and value of options exercised. Findings In total, 86 percent of CEO performance and 91 percent of CEO pay distributions fit a power law better than a normal distribution, indicating that a minority of CEOs are producing top value for their firms (i.e. CEO performance) and a minority of CEOs are appropriating top value for themselves (i.e. CEO pay). But, the authors also found little overlap between CEOs who are the top performers and CEOs who are the top earners. Implications The findings shed new light on CEO pay deservingness by using a novel conceptual and methodological lens that highlights systematic over and underpayment. Results suggest a violation of distributive justice and offer little support for agency theory’s efficient contracting hypothesis, which have important implications for agency theory, equity theory, justice theory, and agent risk sharing and agent risk bearing theories. Practical implications Results highlight erroneous practices when trying to benchmark CEO pay based on average levels of performance in an industry because the typical approach to CEO compensation based on averages significantly underpays stars and overpays average performers. Originality/value Results offer new insights on the extent of over and underpayment. The findings uncover an extremely large non-overlap between the top earning and top performing CEOs and to an extent far greater in magnitude than previously suggested.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eko Heru Prasetyo

Purpose This study aims to investigate how digital entrepreneurs develop platforms business models under an unregulated market and what approach they take to address informal economy (IE) activities. Design/methodology/approach The author used a qualitative method by interviewing sixteen respondents, including founders, Chief Executive Officers, and managers of digital-driven start-ups in Indonesia. I then analysed the interviews into several codes and themes for further discussion. Findings This study reveals distinctive approaches performed by startups within three-level institutions, namely, users, market and regulation. Each level represents digital entrepreneurs’ unique behaviour, which the author described as collective, narrative and compliant. Research limitations/implications This paper demonstrates that digital entrepreneurs leveraging informal sectors contribute to the process of formalisation. However, the author emphasise less on how it impacts informality and who receives incentives. Practical implications This study suggests appropriate strategies for entrepreneurs who build and develop a platform beyond immature setting and unveils different directions to comprehend their legitimacy building. Social implications This study also elucidates political implications such as how the dynamics between regulators’ response and entrepreneurs’ reaction shape the new regulative environment. An idea of self-regulate – entrepreneurs as actors instead of a subject of regulation – might be suitable to reflect how they overcome the bottom of the pyramid using technology innovation. Originality/value While previous studies focused primarily on sharing economy, this study provides a different array of discussion on the digitalisation of the informal economy in emerging markets.


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