CEO succession at many companies occurs in a black box. Shareholders are not privy to boardroom discussions prior to the announcement of a CEO departure, and press releases announcing the change contain boilerplate language that does not make it clear whether the CEO stepped down voluntary or...

Shareholders pay considerable attention to the choice of executive selected as the new CEO whenever a change in leadership takes place. However, without an inside look at the leading candidates to assume the CEO role, it is difficult for shareholders to tell whether the board has made the...

Many observers consider the most important responsibility of the board of directors its responsibility to hire and fire the CEO. To this end, an interesting situation arises when a CEO resigns and the board chooses neither an internal nor external candidate, but a current board member as...

We study the market for CEOs of large publicly-traded US firms, analyze new CEOs' prior connections to the hiring firm, and explore how hiring choices are determined. Firms are hiring from a surprisingly small pool of candidates. More than 80% of new CEOs are insiders, defined as current or...

This paper investigates the effect of CEO succession on the performance of family firms characterized by collegial leadership and the moderating role of the Family CEO, of the board of directors and by the size of the firm. The empirical analysis, carried out on a sample of Italian family firms...

In an increasingly competitive market environment, as an important decision for strategic change, CEO succession is a key step to driving sustainable development. The formulation of succession plans and how to improve the effectiveness of internal promotion mechanisms have been researched topics...

This study develops and tests predictions regarding factors that influence early-stage CEO evaluation. We suggest that contextual elements of the CEO succession process will influence the heuristics directors employ to aid in their early evaluation of a CEO because traditional performance...