Successor Type and Organizational Change in the Corporate Enterprise

Abstract

This research examines the hypothesis that corporate organizations experiencing inside succession in the office of the president exhibit less organizational change than firms undergoing outside succession. The type of succession is related to a combined measure of organizational change based on position shifts and personnel turnover in the executive role constellation. The research also controls for background effects from five potentially confounding variables: organizational performance, successor's style of leadership, intensity of operations, organizational size, and administrative growth in the industry. Measurable events of the succession process of the organization are emphasized, rather than the direct observation of social organizational patterns that emerge in the executive group itself. The data base is derived from 208 chemical and allied product corporations which have experienced presidential succession at least once in the ten-year period of analysis. The analysis of the data using the partial gamma coefficient and a modification of the chi-square statistic supports the basic hypothesis.