Research Question/Issue: From its inception in the late 1980s and early 1990s, founder-chief executive officer (CEO) research has garnered significant scholarly attention in the strategy and entrepreneurship disciplines, although other fields-such as economics, finance, and family business-have also generated substantial research insight on this topic. Despite this progress, a limited consensus exists on the influence of the founder CEO owing to the fragmented nature of extant research. In this review, we address this fragmentation by reviewing current literature, synthesizing the discipline-specific findings into an integrated framework, and highlighting promising directions for future founder-CEO research. Research Findings/Insights: Using a cross-disciplinary review of founder-CEO research based on 221 articles from 24 academic journals, we synthesize current research and provide directions for future research. Our framework organizes current research on the founder CEO into three broad themes. First, we review and synthesize scholarly work on factors related to the founder CEO during the nascent years of the firm. In the second theme, we review research that explores the impact of the founder CEO on strategic choices and firm configurations. In the third theme, we review the performance consequences of the founder CEO. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This review advances research on the founder CEO by taking stock of insights from various disciplines, highlighting advancements made, and suggesting promising directions for future research on founder CEOs. Additionally, a critical evaluation of current methodological approaches provides opportunities for strengthening the rigor of scholarly inquiry in this area.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), as the principal leader of the firm, plays an essential role in the prevention of corporate misconduct. While all CEOs have a responsibility to reduce incidents of corporate misconduct, not all are equally effective in doing so. In this study, we propose that given their central role in the inception of the firm, their psychological attachment, and stewardship mentality, founder CEO-led firms exhibit less likelihood and frequency of environmental violations, which are major types of corporate misconduct. Additionally, we explore the possibility that founder CEOs' ability to reduce environmental violations may decline over time as the firm gets older and larger, using insights from organizational life cycle theory. Our analyses of data from major environmental violation incidents among S&P 1500 firms between 2009 and 2018 provide some support for our arguments. Specifically, we found that founder CEO leadership is indeed associated with a reduced likelihood and frequency of environmental violations. Furthermore, we observed that the normally negative relationship between founder CEO leadership and the occurrence of environmental violations turns positive as the firm gets older, consistent with organizational life cycle theory predictions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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