CEO LOCUS OF CONTROL AND SMALL FIRM PERFORMANCE - AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL-TEST

Previous research on the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) locus of control is mainly based on simple and partial mappings of bivariat e associations between CEO locus of control and organizational outcome s. In addition, distinct substreams have emerged in which intricately related phenomena are studied separately. To overcome this fragmentati on and polarization, we provide and empirically test an integrative fr amework based on previously tested hypotheses on the impact of CEO loc us of control. Our approach differs from prior research in two ways. F irst, it simultaneously takes account of strategic choice and firm per formance in order to assess the extent to which strategy mediates the relationship between CEO locus of control and organizational performan ce. Second, we consider the CEO to be both a formulator and implemento r of organizational strategies. Besides the observation that CEO locus of control seems to matter a lot in terms of explaining organizationa l performance in the present sample, our results demonstrate that an i ntegrative approach increases our insight into the impact of CEO locus of control by revealing why some CEOs achieve higher organizational p erformance than others.