This study investigates the personal experience of newly appointed chief executives in
transitioning into the CEO role. Adopting an exploratory qualitative design, data was
obtained from two semi-structured interviews with 19 newly appointed chief executives,
for a total of 38 interviews.
The main contribution of this thesis to the extant literature is to show the ways in which
CEOs go through an identity construction process when transitioning into the role, which
is characterized in two ways. First, there exists a bi-directionality of influence between the
personal identity of the CEO and the organizational identity. Second, this process
comprises strong identity demands (lack of specificity of the role and weak situation) and
identity tensions (personal identity intrusion and identity transparency) that dispose new
CEOs towards an unbalance that promotes individuality.
This disequilibrium might hinder the integration of new chief executives into the
organization, since the data suggests that new CEOs are responsible for fostering their
own integration by connecting aspects of their personal identity with the identity and
culture of the organization. The thesis offers a theoretical model of the CEO identity
construction process and concludes with a series of propositions that address the
ramifications of these findings to our understanding of CEO succession.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CRANFIELD1/oai:dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk:1826/9996 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Probert, Joana Amora |
| Contributors | Ladkin, Donna, Denyer, David |
| Publisher | Cranfield University |
| Source Sets | CRANFIELD1 |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or dissertation, Doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | © Cranfield University, 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright holder. |
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