Firing and Hiring the CEO: What Does CEO Turnover Data Tell Us About Succession Planning?
Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working Paper Forthcoming
Stanford University Graduate School of Business Research Paper
22 Pages Posted: 12 Apr 2022
Date Written: April 7, 2022
Abstract
We examine CEO turnover and succession planning using a unique and highly comprehensive data set from the company exechange. Exechange applies a novel methodology that evaluates the circumstances surrounding a CEO departure to determine the degree to which the turnover event might be voluntary or involuntary (called the Push-Out Score). With this data, we are able to provide new statistics on CEO departures and fresh analysis in three areas of succession planning—sensitivity of turnover to performance, board preparedness to name a successor, and the performance of internal and external successors—to arrive at a more current assessment of the quality of CEO succession planning among publicly traded companies in the U.S.
Keywords: Corporate governance, CEO turnover, CEO terminations, succession planning, interim successors, permanent successors, internal, external, voluntary, involuntary, Push-Out Scores, disclosure, board oversight, board of directors, corporate governance research
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