Impact of CEO succession in Japanese companies: A coevolutionary perspective

In this paper, we set out to investigate whether strategic leadership matte rs at a moment in the life cycle of the firm when a change is made in the t op leadership. By far, most of the conceptual and empirical literature on t he consequences of CEO succession involves United States companies. Therefo re, in this paper, we set out to investigate the impact of CEO succession o n strategic and organizational changes in Japanese companies. The empirical study consisted of a matched control group design involving 8 1 Japanese companies experiencing a CEO succession event and sl companies w ith continuity of their CEO leadership. The results of the study can be sum marized as follows. Overall CEO succession was not associated with radical strategic and organization changes. Japanese companies did engage in evolut ionary organization and strategic adaptations during the five year period o f the study but independent of CEO succession. The governance structure mod erates organization changes (independent of CEO succession) in particular w hen the firm was affiliated with a main bank and the firm was experiencing severe financial pressure.