This research examines the relationship between narcissistic personality characteristics in Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and firms' innovation outcomes. The authors argue that firms led by narcissistic CEOs are likely to exhibit a higher rate of new product introductions and a greater proportion of radical innovations in their new product portfolios, but they are also more likely to encounter product-harm crises. The impact of CEO narcissism on these innovation outcomes is partially mediated by firms' higher competitive aggressiveness. High power of the marketing department in the top management team, however, increases firms' customer orientation, which in turn weakens the relationship between CEO narcissism and product-harm crises. A longitudinal analysis of a sample of 395 publicly listed U.S. firms in the period 2006-2010 provides considerable support for the authors' hypotheses. This research underscores the importance of studying CEOs' personality traits as antecedents of firms' innovation outcomes, highlights the positive and negative impact of CEO narcissism on firms' innovation-related behavior, and delineates the process through which this impact takes place.
The authors examine the effect of a major customer data breach at a US retail fi rm on the market value of other US retailers. Using the massive breach at Target Corporation in the year 2013 as their empirical context, the authors discover the existence of a strong industry-wide contagion effect; the results from an event study of 168 publicly listed US retail fi rms indicate that the Target breach resulted in negative abnormal returns for other US retailers. The authors also explore the role played by marketing factors in insulating some retailers from this contagion effect. They fi nd empirical evidence that retailers where the marketing function held a high degree of infl uence in the top management team (TMT), those with strong marketing capabilities, and those with strong corporate social performance (CSP), experienced less negative abnormal returns surrounding the news of the Target breach. These results highlight the shielding benefi t that strong marketing resources and high corporate citizenship provide to retailers in the backdrop of an industry counterpart's customer data breach.
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