New Executives from Inside or Outside? The Effect of Executive Replacement on Organizational Change

Abstract

This article investigates how executive succession influences the comprehensiveness of structural changes pursued by public organizations. Executive successions are important events for organizations that provide salient opportunities for introducing organizational change, yet little research has analyzed this relationship. The author argues that the less familiarity a new executive has with the organization and the field in which it works, the more likely it is that comprehensive organizational change will take place. Empirical results from quantitative analyses of executive succession events in Danish municipalities from 1984 to 2000 confirm this. Interestingly, the degree to which new practices are legitimized moderates the findings. Inside successors are more likely to conduct comprehensive structural changes after new practices receive normative and regulatory legitimacy. The article contributes to the literature on executive succession by highlighting how it is an antecedent to different types of organizational change. Contributions to practitioner and public management research are discussed.

The Relation Between Executive Succession and Corporate Capacity

“…The results of the present study suggest that one explanation of that finding may be that outside successors operate with a larger administration in the years after assuming their executive position and need time to settle in in their new position. In another study Villadsen (2012) shows that outside successors are likely to initiate larger structural changes than are inside successors in the period following their appointment. A by-product of more substantial structural changes may be the need for more coordination, which may constitute an additional explanation for the findings of this study.…”

“…Putting new ideas into life is also likely to require a strong and supportive corporate centre that can link to other parts of the organization. This need is further amplified by external successors tending to engage in major changes requiring effective support functions (Villadsen 2012). …”

“…Their model proposes that the organizational effects of executive successions depend on the new executive's motives, means, and opportunities. Various parts of this model have been explored in recent research which has investigated antecedents to executive succession (Boyne et al 2010) as well as outcomes of executive succession events including student test scores (Hill 2005), public service performance ) and the degree of subsequent structural changes (Villadsen, 2012). While the results of this line of research support the notion that executives have the power to impact and change organizational processes and operations, it has only started to explore the motives and opportunities causing executives to pursue different lines of action and obtaining different results after they take up a new position.…”

Casting a Larger Net: Determinants of Managerial Networking in Public Organizations

“…This insight has explained why organizations are more likely to adopt practices that were present at a new manager's previous place of employment (Kraatz and Moore, 2002). Along these lines it has also been found that managers with previous employment outside the field of a new organization are more likely to carry out more profound organizational changes (Villadsen, 2012). Similarly, we may expect managerial networking to be affected by experience in other sectors or other parts of the public sector.…”

The role of chief executive tenure for public organizations' hiring of management consultants

“…We build on this research by taking a longitudinal stance, and regard the influence of CEs on their organizations' propensity to hire MCS as likely to change as new experiences are made. Inspired by recent studies in public administration research, we do so by focusing on a specific aspect of CE characteristics: tenure (see, e.g., Esteve et al, ), which has been shown to be closely related to organizational change in public organizations (Villadsen, ) a typical reason for the use of consultants. Thus, in contrast to previous research that has focused on rather static characteristics such as public managers' gender (Meier, O'Toole, & Goerdel, ), our approach turns interest to variations over time (Damanpour & Schneider, ).…”