Predicting executive vacancies: An organizational approach

Abstract

When an executive departs, some organizations experience a vacancy while others do not. Recent research shows that the occurrence and length of vacancy instances within and across sectors varies widely. However, the causes of such variance in vacancies have yet to be carefully addressed by public management research. This study explores the determinants of executive vacancy, focusing specifically on organizational‐level characteristics of size, performance, and sector as well as the role of anticipation of a departure. We use data from public and private US doctoral universities to identify 230 leadership transitions between 1993 and 2013. In this context, we find that anticipation of departure is an extremely strong predictor of vacancy. Moreover, private universities are significantly less likely than their public counterparts to experience executive vacancy while organizational performance and size do not appear to influence vacancy.

Top managers in public organizations: A systematic literature review and future research directions

“…Besides, given the burgeoning literature on TM in generic management journals, we observe surprisingly few sector comparisons. This is important as sector comparisons could help us better understand when and how ideas from studies in the private sector are likely to travel to the public sector (see Bello‐Gomez and Rutherford (2023) as an example).…”

“…Besides, given the burgeoning literature on TM in generic management journals, we observe surprisingly few sector comparisons. This is important as sector comparisons could help us better understand when and how ideas from studies in the private sector are likely to travel to the public sector (see Bello-Gomez and Rutherford (2023) as an example). Note: We combine Bozeman's (1987) and Antonsen and Jørgensen's (1997) dimensional approaches of publicness to discern the publicness of the elements in the top management system.…”

“…There is still some way to go to understand how top managers' work and interactions are enabled and constrained by various cognitive and psychological processes. Recent advances in behavioral public administration may be helpful, as suggested in recent studies (Bello-Gomez & Rutherford, 2023;Lapuente et al, 2020;Suzuki & Hur, 2020).…”