How CEOs protect themselves against dismissal: A social status perspective

Abstract

In this study, we address the question of why some CEOs stay in office during a performance downturn while others don't. Taking a social status perspective, we argue that an individual's board network embeddednessas reflected in the number of outside directorshipsplays an important role in dismissal decisions. We predict that a high status of the CEO relative to the chairman of the board protects an underperforming CEO against dismissal, while the relative salience of board network outsiders can counter this effect. Using longitudinal data of large German corporations, we find support for our predictions.