CEOs who have COOs: Contingency analysis of an unexplored structural form Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We use contingency theory to examine, for the first time, the incidence and effectiveness of CEO/COO duos. We argue that industry dynamism, extraordinary organizational task demands, and the CEO 's own professional limitations will influence the decision to have a COO, as well as its effect on performance. Based on a large 10-year sample, we find some support for the contingency view in explaining the presence of COOs; we particularly find that CEOs who lack experience in operational activities and in managing the focal firm are relatively likely to have COOs. We find, however, essentially no support for the contingency view in explaining when COOs are most beneficial. Instead, we find strong evidence of a very substantial negative main effect: CEOs who have COOs deliver lower organizational performance than those who do not. Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

published proceedings

  • STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 10

author list (cited authors)

  • Hambrick, D. C., & Cannella, A. A.

citation count

  • 188

complete list of authors

  • Hambrick, DC||Cannella, AA

publication date

  • September 2004

publisher