Who drives the change? Revisiting the CEO's strategic commitment

Abstract

The Upper Echelons Theory has been proved to play an important role in strategic management research. Former studies have shown significant effects of CEO-specific demographic data on a firm's strategic outcome. For a further validation of those results, we reevaluate the existing results based on the concept of the commitment to the status quo (CSQ) on a German sample. Furthermore, we extend past research and investigate the impact of selected characteristics of CEO turnovers on CEOs' strategic commitment. We find evidence that supports existing findings about antecedents of CSQ, i.e. CEO tenure and past performance are good determinants for CEO's CSQ. Contrariwise, the influence of other factors like firm size or slack resources has to be reconsidered in international context. Our results further suggest that especially newly appointed CEOs after a forced turnover have the lowest commitment to current strategies and therefore the largest potential to overcome organizational inertia.