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Director independence has been one of the most studied factors across the related literature on organization governance, including strategy, organizational theory, and in practitioner settings. The empirical research regarding independence is not consistent. The previous literature has taken a rather blunt conceptualization of independence. To further explore this conversation, this panel symposium aims to invite panelists to have recently discussed the independence construct to identify the underlying implications for corporate governance. The purpose of the symposium is to aid in scholars reigniting and further refining the understanding and exploration of (in)dependence into more nuanced and less blunt recommendations for best practices in corporate governance. More specifically, this symposium aims to 1) identify the pre-agency theory arguments and find a more refined treatment of dependence, 2) evaluate the potential different types of dependence: financial and social, 3) extend past the common sample of large firms and explore how dependence manifests itself in smaller firms making impactful strategic decisions, and 4) re-anchoring logics that have been lying dormant. Attendants will leave the symposium with a renewed sense of excitement and curiosity about the role of dependence on Board of Directors' and the impact that has on corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study on the impact of conformity and deviation from the crowd on equity analysts' reputation-maintaining processes and reputation-building. It details how the study was conducted which involved data from three sources including the "Institutional Investors" journal and surveys involving equity analysts. It examines how analysts develop their reputation and poses theories on the ways that prior reputation can affect subsequent reputation. It also details how each companies' stock prices were gathered as well as equity analysts' company earnings estimates.

The article discusses organizational theory in the context of chief executive officers' identification with the firm and the effect of organizational commitment on agency costs. The hypothesis is that an executive whose self identity is strongly connected to the company's identity or corporate image are motivated to reduce agency costs for the firm and its stakeholders. Corporate governance, self-interest and motivation in chief executive officers, unrelated corporate diversification, and the use of management controls are also discussed.

The article presents the results of research on executive succession, focusing on the strategic noise which is often used to deliberately obscure the details of chief executive officer succession planning. An overview of related previous studies is provided, along with details of the research protocol, which involved data analysis of all Fortune 1000 firms between 1998 and 2005. It was found that the uncertainty and confusion surrounding such transitions is largely rooted in impression management strategies intended to take advantage of informational asymmetry, in order to influence the public perception of such transitions.

This article discusses challenges posed to the oversight roles of boards of directors by the increasing complexity of business operations. The role of information management strategies in determining the effectiveness of corporate governance programs is described. Issues relating to competing management priorities facing board members are considered. Issues of human capital in the construction of boards of directors are considered. Human capital is measured by reference to educational levels attained and managerial experience.

The author studied information taken from a sampling of U.S. Fortune 1000 companies and analyzed information about corporations' ability to appeal to desirable corporate directors and retain their services, and make use of the attendant human and social capital that such directors bring to their positions. Institutional investors, mutual and pension funds that hold in excess of 5 percent of a corporation's outstanding securities, have pushed for changes in corporate governance to force companies to be responsible to investors. The study reports on the effects to the board of directors of investors' pressures.

Research on organization--environment relations has focused primarily on formal linkages between organizations such as board interlock ties as a strategy for managing resource dependence. This study examines whether top executives may be especially likely to maintain informal ties to other executives in order to manage uncertainty arising from resource dependence. Our point of departure is research on boards of directors that has examined whether so-called "broken board ties" (ties that are disrupted due to executive turnover) tend to be reconstituted, and whether resource dependence explains the likelihood of reconstitution. These studies have generally provided little evidence that board ties are used to manage resource dependence. We draw from theory and research on social embeddedness and friendship to suggest that, as a strategy for managing dependence, the maintenance of friendship ties between top executives provides benefits that are comparable to the supposed benefits of board cooptation, while imposing fewer constraints on the organization. Our theory leads to the contention that corporate leaders are more likely to reconstitute friendship ties than board ties to leaders of other firms that have the power to constrain their firms' access to needed resources when those ties have been disrupted (e.g., due to turnover of the CEO's friend). Testing our hypotheses with a unique dataset that includes survey data from U.S. corporate leaders at two points in time, we find strong support for our theoretical framework. We discuss how the theory and findings help integrate strategic perspectives on inter-organizational relations with sociological perspectives on embeddedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large CEO pay packages have become the subject of increased negative scrutiny among the media and general public, suggesting that CEO compensation may affect the firm by influencing stakeholder perceptions and behaviors. Although some recent research has begun to study the association between high CEO compensation and CEO greed, whether and how CEO greed is perceived by stakeholders remains to be examined. We develop theory on CEO compensation and broaden our understanding of its consequences by examining whether and how CEO compensation leads to perceptions of CEO greed. Focusing on job seekers, a population especially likely to attend to information about firms and CEOs, we find evidence that high CEO compensation leads to perceptions of CEO greed among job seekers and that such perceptions lowers job seekers' attraction to the CEO's firm. Moreover, we find that these relationships are weakened for job seekers who themselves exhibit high levels of greed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the field of management has long argued the importance of manager attributes in organizational outcomes, scholars are often constraint by the limitation of data availability and computational power. To overcome the challenges, scholars start to leverage the recent development of computer science in management research. This symposium is focused on new measures using big data and machine learning techniques in strategic leadership research. The goal of the symposium is to bring together active scholars to demonstrate and discuss the opportunities and challenges of applying these new unobtrusive measures. The presentations explore a wide range of manager attributes including Big Five personality, immigration status, linguistic style, and humility and their implications on organizational investment, crises management, competitive strategy, and corporate governance. Overall, the goal of this symposium is to initiate a timely conversation with the audience from STR, RM, and OB divisions and, broadly, contribute to the theme of the annual meeting "Bringing the Manager Back in Management" by offering new insights into how managers affect organizational outcomes. CEO Personality and Intangible Investments. Presenter: Steven Boivie; Texas A&M U. Presenter: Joseph Harrison; Texas Christian U. Presenter: Steve C. Lim; Texas Christian U. Presenter: Lindsey Yonish; -. Immigrant CEOs and Leading During a Crisis. Presenter: Dany Bahar; The Brookings Institution. Presenter: Prithwiraj Choudhury; Harvard U. Presenter: Britta Glennon; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania. To Be Remembered: Leader Linguistic Style and Entrepreneurial Firm Resource Acquisition during IPO. Presenter: Wei Guo; Hong Kong Polytechnic U. CEO Humility, Corporate Governance, and Shareholder Activism. Presenter: Xina Li; INSEAD. Presenter: Amy Y. Ou; Department of Management &Marketing, Faculty of Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic. Presenter: Guoli Chen; INSEAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we focus on the role that CEO diversity-valuing behavior plays in shaping top executive turnover. We examine executive psychological safety as a key intervening mechanism. Further, we propose that the negative effect of CEO diversity-valuing behavior will be stronger for female executives. We test and find support for our theory and hypotheses using survey data from a sample of top executives in the largest 1,000 firms in the U.S. Our findings show that executive psychological safety mediates the effect of perceived CEO diversity-valuing behavior on executive turnover and that the negative indirect effect is stronger for female executives. Our study contributes to the upper echelons and diversity literatures by examining the impact of CEO diversity-valuing behavior on executive psychological safety and turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial restatements can lead to numerous substantive and symbolic actions that help offending firms regain legitimacy. Prior research has generally focused on "changing of the guard" as a response to restatements, where directors exit the board. However, firms are not limited to the binary decision of whether directors should exit or not. Instead, directors might exit the audit committee while still retaining their board seats--a phenomenon we refer to as committee exit. Drawing on symbolic management theory, we argue that firms may engage in a "shuffling of the guard" that allows them to retain key directors with greater human and social capital, structural power, and influence. Using a sample of audit committee members at publicly traded firms who announced a restatement between 2003 and 2018, we explore which of three possible paths audit committee members take following a restatement: staying on the audit committee, exiting the audit committee but remaining on the board, or exiting the board entirely. The results of our analysis provide support to our arguments that committee exit is an important decoupling tactic for firms that signals change while simultaneously allowing for stability on the board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium brings together scholars from Strategic Management and Human Resources with the intent of promoting interdisciplinary discussion about executive compensation that can advance future research. Scholars in both of these fields have contributed to our understanding of the importance of compensation for motivating and retaining firm executives. Executives are key drivers of strategic outcomes and compensation is critical to ensuring effective management. The papers in this symposium advance our understanding of executive compensation by considering new antecedents and outcomes associated with executive compensation. The symposium will include a discussion led by experts from the Strategic Management and Human Resources division. The Influence of Boards on Executive Compensation: A Grounded Theory Approach Presenter: Steven Boivie; Texas A&M U. Presenter: Kevin G. Corley; Arizona State U. Presenter: Scott Graffin; U. of Georgia The Hidden Dangers of CEO Pay: Exploring the Effects of CEO and Employee Compensation on Safety Presenter: Adam Steinbach; U. of South Carolina Presenter: Spenser Essman; Darla Moore School of Business, U. of South Carolina Compensation Peer Groups and CEO Mobility Presenter: Steffen Burkert; LMU Munich Presenter: Marco Tonellato; LMU Munich Presenter: Robert Kase; U. of Ljubljana Presenter: Ingo Weller; LMU Munich Signaling a Successor: Examining the Executive Compensation-CEO Succession Relationship Presenter: Spenser Essman; Darla Moore School of Business, U. of South Carolina Presenter: Donald Joseph Schepker; U. of South Carolina [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of CEO turnover for organizations is well established. Indeed, CEO turnover is inevitable in organizations and can have a significant impact on firm outcomes. Given its importance, researchers have dedicated a great deal of attention to studying this organizational event and the processes surrounding it. Specifically, most research in this area can be largely classified into three areas of inquiry: the antecedents of CEO turnover, the forms of CEO turnover, and the consequences of CEO turnover. While research in these three areas has advanced our understanding of CEO turnover, much is still to be understood. In this panel symposium, we shift the theoretical conversation surrounding CEO turnover by discussing new and important research opportunities within each of these three areas, including investigating the CEO succession planning process, examining other forms of turnover, such as retirement and death, and looking at the impact of CEO turnover on firm reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend upper echelons research by examining how chief executive officers' (CEOs') "Big Five" personality traits (i.e., extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, and neuroticism) affect strategic change and firm risk. To do this, we develop and validate a novel, unobtrusive, language-based measures of the CEO's Big Five personality traits, which allows us to test our current hypotheses as well as provide a strong foundation for future research on CEO personality. Using a sample of more than 3,000 CEOs of S&P 1500 firms, we find that CEOs' personalities have both direct and interactive effects on their firms' propensity towards strategic change and market perceptions of firm risk. Specifically, we find that CEO openness is positively related, while conscientiousness and agreeableness are negatively related to strategic change. We also find that CEO extraversion and neuroticism are positively related, while conscientiousness is negatively related to the perceived riskiness of the firm. In addition, we also find evidence that certain traits also moderate the influence that two antecedents of strategic change and firm risk, namely poor firm performance and the CEO's compensation risk, have on these two outcomes. We find that CEO openness attenuates, while conscientiousness and agreeableness amplify the positive relationship between poor performance and change, whereas high conscientiousness attenuates the positive relationship between compensation risk and firm risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the CEO organizational identification literature, we theorize that founder CEO succession decisions will be dependent upon the strength of these CEOs' organizational identification with their firms. Our theoretical premise is that factors that decrease founder CEOs' organizational identification-being a serial entrepreneur and the number of cofounders-will positively affect their succession. Conversely, factors that increase founder CEOs' organizational identification-time as a private firm and core founder status-will negatively affect their succession. We find strong support for our arguments in the context of IPO firms during the 2000-2013 period. Our findings enable us to illustrate that founder CEOs' succession decisions may be better understood by considering their psychological traits rather than focusing only on their performance and control power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the director labor market has primarily focused on internal factors driving director exit, such as firm performance or director characteristics, but has mostly overlooked how external factors may influence director exit. We draw on the reputation literature and self-determination theory to argue that downgrades from "star" analysts increase the likelihood of director exit by reducing a director's perceived value from serving on a particular board and that this effect is contingent on various factors that affect the salience of negative star analyst attention. Results from a sample of 12,971 unique directors between 2003 and 2010 largely support our hypotheses. Specifically, we find that star downgrades are positively and significantly related to director exit. We also find that serving as the board chair or on a greater number of outside boards reduces this effect, while serving as the compensation committee chair and longer firm tenure intensify this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the question: What do executives gain from serving on boards? We propose that board service acts as a certification mechanism in the executive labor market that can positively influence executive careers outside of the boardroom, particularly for non-CEO executives serving on their first boards. We argue that non-CEO executives who gain directorships will be more likely to be promoted to CEO, will achieve these promotions more quickly, and will receive higher pay from their home firms. To test our ideas, we employ propensity score matching to construct a longitudinal sample of 1,336 top executives of large, publicly traded companies in the United States over the period 1996 to 2011. Results provide consistent support for our theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research into the effects of reputation, virtually all of this research has examined the effect of one type of reputation on one or more specific outcomes. In this study we ask the question: How do the reputations of star analysts and star CEOs individually and jointly affect firm outcomes? To answer this question we focus on a context where reputations are particularly relevant - changes in analyst recommendations and the effect of those changes on stock market reactions. Our study makes a contributions to the growing reputation literature by being one of the first studies to recognize and measure how the market accounts for multiple reputations within a given context. Furthermore, we argue and find that the reputations of different actors interact with each other when determining particular firm outcomes. We find that different reputational domains influence both the actions of actors as well as the reactions of observers. Finally, we demonstrate that prior reputational research may have misstated the effects of reputation (either positively or negatively) by failing to consider how other forms of related reputation may jointly affect outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]