Ryan Krause

CEO Duality A Review and Research Agenda

CEO duality—the practice of a single individual serving as both CEO and board chair—has been the subject of academic interest for more than 20 years. In that time, boards’ use of CEO duality has fluctuated and the scholarly conceptualizations of the phenomenon have become more complex. As such, the need to understand CEO duality has only increased with time. We review and integrate the disparate literature on this topic so that future attempts to study it will benefit from a more complete understanding of the knowledge already produced. We review the demonstrated antecedents and consequences of CEO duality, pointing out that while much work has been done in this area, much remains that we do not understand. Finally, we offer new theoretical, methodological, and contextual directions that researchers could explore to extend knowledge about CEO duality.

Toward a Configurational Perspective on the CEO A Review and Synthesis of the Management Literature

Management literature offers substantial insight about many aspects of CEO-related phenomena. Whether it involves aspects of the position of CEO, personal characteristics of the CEO, or the environment in which the CEO operates, research about the CEO has yielded a number of important findings. Despite the proliferation of research regarding the CEO, we find that the literature as a whole is fragmented. By this, we mean that the CEO is often used as a context to test discrete theories. In this article, we contend that the fragmentation in the literature is a result of scholarship existing within theoretical fault lines and rarely venturing to incorporate theories beyond a given domain. This fragmentation results in inconsistent and inconclusive findings in the CEO-related literature. We propose an integrative framework, which we call the configurational perspective on the CEO, to help resolve this fragmentation problem. The configurational perspective on the CEO highlights three separate CEO-related research domains: the position, the person, and the environment. In taking stock of research in each of these domains, we address how they can be integrated in different configurations to help reduce the fragmented nature of the literature.

Ready, Set, Slow: How Aspiration-Relative Product Quality Impacts the Rate of New Product Introduction

Performance feedback research addresses how firms respond to performance that diverges from their aspirations. Whereas the majority of research in this vein involves financial performance, we apply this framework to product quality performance, arguing that when performance diverges either below or above aspirations, firms will pursue a slower subsequent product introduction rate, either to identify the cause of the underperformance or to incorporate the successful product characteristics in the case of overperformance. We also investigate whether our predictions hold when two boundary conditions are applied. Since product quality aspirations are derived from the “reputations for quality” of the firm and its peers, we argue that the stability of these reputations will amplify the delaying effects of below- and above-aspiration performance. Consistent with research on firm responses to financial performance, we also predict that greater sales revenues relative to sales aspirations will attenuate the delaying effects of aspiration-relative performance divergence. Our analysis of 1,332 video games released by 48 publishers from 2006 to 2009 is largely consistent with these predictions.

When does it pay to stand out as stand-up? Competitive contingencies in the corporate social performance–corporate financial performance relationship:

We develop a competitive contingency model of the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance, focusing on the moderating effects of industry-based factors. We conceptualize corporate social performance as a form of strategic differentiation and predict that the positive link between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance is strongest when a firm competes in an environment that is not conducive to corporate social performance. Analyses of data from roughly 2500 publicly traded firms between 2002 and 2009 support the moderating effects of industry munificence and social orientation. We discuss the implications of our contingency model for firms seeking a competitive advantage through corporate social performance.

When and How Board Members with Marketing Experience Facilitate Firm Growth

Scholars have expressed concern that marketings influence at the strategic levels of the firm is waning. Consistent with this view, only 2.6% of firms’ board members have marketing experience. The authors suggest that this is shortsighted and that including more marketing-experienced board members (MEBMs) will increase firm growth by (1) helping firms prioritize growth as a strategic objective and (2) contributing their expertise to improve the effectiveness of revenue growth strategies. Drawing on the behavioral model of corporate governance, the authors develop a theoretical framework explicating the situational, dispositional, and structural influence moderators that alter the impact of MEBMs on firm growth. Using 64,086 director biographies from S&P 1500 firms, the authors find that MEBMs positively affect firm-level revenue growth and that this relationship is strengthened or weakened by important contingencies that occur in the firm. The findings suggest that the common practice of not including experienced marketers on boards of directors puts firms at a competitive disadvantage.

How Product Quality and Affinity toward the Firm Influence Reputation for Quality

Several calls from the social evaluations literature underscore the importance of investigating the microfoundations of reputation and the potential interplay across social evaluation constructs. With the present study, we employ two controlled, randomized experiments to examine how product quality observations influence one’s perceptions of a firm’s reputation for quality. We show respondents the product qualities of multiple firms for whom respondents hold different levels of affinity, a building block of social approval. In Study 1, we expose respondents to one of four product quality combinations from a high affinity and low affinity firm, and find that both firms’ reputations for quality are penalized when they underperform their rival. Moreover, while both firms’ reputations benefit more from higher product quality, neither firm benefits from outperforming the other. In Study 2, we add a fictionalized ‘neutral’ affinity firm and simplify our product quality primers, finding that whereas the high aff...

A Context of Contracts: Rethinking the Link between Corporate Social and Financial Performance

Extant research is equivocal as to the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance. We propose that this equivocality is largely based on the aggregation of many stakeholders within the corporate social performance construct. Drawing upon stakeholder theory, we hypothesize that social performance directed towards stakeholders with which the firm has a contractual relationship positively influences financial performance, while social performance directed towards non-contractual stakeholders does not. Through empirical analyses of 300 firms, we find support for our expectations.

Teach Your Ventures Well: A Control-Based Typology of ICV Parenting Styles

Internal corporate venturing (ICV), the creation of wholly new firms within the organizational boundaries of an existing parent firm, has captured the attention of management scholars for over thre...