New CEOs and Corporate Strategic Refocusing: How Experience as Heir Apparent Influences the Use of Power
研究新任CEO的继承人经验如何影响其运用权力推动或维持企业战略重构，发现继承人经验与多项权力指标存在交互作用。
This paper integrates corporate governance research on the consequences of executive power and the upper echelons literature on top managers' cognitive orientation to develop a framework in which the characteristics of the chief executive officer (CEO) predict corporate strategic refocusing. With data from a sample of large and diversified firms, we examine the extent to which newly appointed CEOs' strategic orientation determines whether they use their power to maintain the status quo or refocus their firms' business portfolios. We assess CEOs' power with seven widely used indicators and use experience as heir apparent to the prior CEO as a measure of new CEOs' strategic orientation. Overall, results show that CEOs' power use is influenced by heir apparent experience in predicting the level of corporate strategic refocusing. Heir apparent experience interacts with four power indicators—compensation, functional expertise, elite education, and number of outside boards on which the new CEO is seated—but the interaction between heir apparent experience and number of outside boards is contrary to what was hypothesized.