Originally found at Nonprofit Quarterly, by Aparna Anand Joshi, Donald C. Hambrick, and Jiyeon Kang.
What determines a company’s readiness for navigating a CEO transition? Our proposed answer builds upon prior research on CEO succession, viewed through a novel theoretical lens based on generativity theory and the mindset of the exiting CEO.
We assess exiting CEO stances by focusing on two key dimensions: a) the CEO’s degree of commitment to developing the next generation of company leadership, and b) the CEO’s degree of need to control the succession process and outcome. A given CEO’s place on these two dimensions generates an overall “generativity mindset.”
Since a given CEO could score low or high on the two scalar dimensions of generativity, this creates four archetypes, as shown in Figure 1: a) the hypo-generative CEO, who has little need to develop the next generation or to control the succession outcome; b) the generative CEO, who has a strong need to develop the next generation but little need to control the succession outcome; c) the hyper-generative CEO, who has a strong need to develop the next generation and a strong need to control the succession outcome; and d) the anti-generative CEO who has little need to develop the next generation and a strong need to control the succession outcome—specifically a strong need to thwart the rise of potential replacements, so as to stay in office as long as possible.
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