Researchers posed these questions in a recent publication in\u00a0Strategic Management Journal<\/em><\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Most people improve with practice, but we find that this doesn’t hold true when it comes to directors selecting new CEOs, despite the high stakes,” said Rich Gentry<\/strong>, chair and professor of\u00a0management<\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0University of Mississippi<\/strong><\/a>. “We found that directors with more past experience in CEO hiring do not tend to select better-performing CEOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In fact, there’s some evidence they may do slightly worse.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers included Gentry; Steven Boivie<\/strong>, the Carroll and Dorothy Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership at\u00a0Texas A&M<\/strong><\/a>; Inn Hee Gee<\/strong>, assistant professor in the Division of Management and International Business at the\u00a0University of Oklahoma<\/strong><\/a>; and Scott Graffin<\/strong>, head of the Department of Management at the\u00a0University of Georgia<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team reviewed the hiring processes of CEOs from S&P 1500 firms \u2013 a mix of top U.S. companies of all sizes \u2013 from 1999 to 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hiring a CEO is very difficult, and it is almost impossible to know in advance who would be the perfect CEO,” Boivie said. “Because of that difficulty, it is easy for boards to overinterpret their prior experiences and to believe they should copy those same patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If directors know that they need to avoid overgeneralizing from their prior experiences, then they might make fewer hiring errors.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lead position in any organization often comes with high pressure and high stakes, meaning the decision to hire is an important one, the researchers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “CEOs are asked to manage two different things,” Gentry said. “One is the short-term stock market performance. At the same time, they’re asked to keep the company going for the long term.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Former film photography giant Kodak<\/strong>, for example,\u00a0faced harsh criticism<\/a>\u00a0after its CEO pushed the company to invest in digital photography \u2013 a smart move in the long term. But at the time, analysts criticized the decision for harming short-term profits. Kodak ultimately filed for bankruptcy and restructured, despite being ahead of the curve technologically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, Microsoft<\/strong>‘s board saw\u00a0long-term success after hiring CEO Satya Nadella<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in 2014. Nadella’s embrace of cloud computing helped revitalize the company and dramatically grow its value while maintaining short-term profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers gauged the performance of CEOs using metrics such as firm performance adjusted for industry norms and company condition at the time of hire. They found that just because a board member has been on the hiring team for a CEO before doesn’t mean they’ve hired a successful one, or that they know what to look for in a leader, Gentry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s superstitious learning \u2013 the concept that ‘I’ve done it before; therefore, I probably know what I’m doing,'” he said. “Most humans have this concept of self-efficacy, but when it comes to a rare and complex event like hiring a CEO, it doesn’t always work that way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most directors face this decision only once or twice in their tenure, making it difficult to build reliable experience, the researchers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The implication of this study is that relying too heavily on prior hiring experience and overgeneralization can result in less successful hiring,” Gee said. “As Steve noted, if directors acknowledge these limitations and approach each hiring decision with deep contextual understanding, they may be able to avoid decision-making errors.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n To hire better, more successful CEOs, boards need to rely not on previous experience, but on structured evaluation and multiple perspectives while treating each hiring as a unique event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “CEO successions are rare, complex and highly context-specific events, making it easy for directors to misattribute what worked before,” Gentry said. “Our findings suggest that boards likely need more systematic support \u2013 beyond accumulated experience \u2013 when hiring new CEOs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Marvis Herring and Clara Turnage<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Study turns spotlight on hiring processes for company heads When companies replace their CEOs, the stakes are high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123462,"featured_media":151142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17687],"tags":[32403,32405,32406,5,7067,4,17434,32407,32404,32402,32401,2087,17629,655,17971],"class_list":["post-151141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university-of-mississippi","tag-inn-hee-gee","tag-kodak","tag-microsoft","tag-mississippi","tag-ole-miss","tag-oxford","tag-rich-gentry","tag-satya-nadella","tag-scott-graffin","tag-steven-boivie","tag-strategic-management-journal","tag-texas-am","tag-university-of-georgia","tag-university-of-mississippi","tag-university-of-oklahoma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/OMN-CEO-bd-directors-image.jpg?fit=1232%2C690&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151145,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151141\/revisions\/151145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\")
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