The Circulation of Corporate Control: Selection of Functional Backgrounds of New CEOs in Large U.S. Manufacturing Firms, 1981–1992

William C. Ocasio · Hyosun Kim

197 citations0/0 files storedAdministrative Science Quarterly

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Corporate Finance and Governance Management and Organizational Studies Organizational Management and Leadership

Abstract

We develop a conceptual model of the circulation of corporate control—the instability in formal authority at the top of large corporations. According to our model, chief executive officer (CEO) selection is both a political contest for the top executive position and an ideological struggle among members of the firm's political coalition over defining the corporate agenda and strategy. We apply the model to analyze the selection of functional backgrounds of 275 new CEOs in large U.S. manufacturing firms from 1981 to 1992. Results show that the circulation of control adds to previous explanations based on strategic contingencies and institutional isomorphism. Furthermore, we find evidence of an ideological and political obsolescence of financial CEOs and a change in the strategic contingencies that previously favored finance and the financial conception of control. Results suggest that conceptions of control are best understood as styles, rather than institutions, as these conceptions are neither taken for granted nor isomorphic across industries or the manufacturing sector, but are subject to sectoral variation, contestation, and change.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 197 citations exist upstream.

References

1983The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields 1977Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony 2004The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields 1984A resource‐based view of the firm 1991The fifth discipline, the art and practice of the learning organization 1985Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance 2006The Core Competence of the Corporation 1984Research in Organizational Behavior

Cited by

2003Covert Political Conflict in Organizations: Challenges from Below 2015How Firms Shape Income Inequality: Stakeholder Power, Executive Decision Making, and the Structuring of Employment Relationships 2016Not All Inequality Is Equal: Deconstructing the Societal Logic of Patriarchy to Understand Microfinance Lending to Women 2016Strategy and commitments to institutional logics: Organizational heterogeneity in business models and governance 2010Avoiding Bad Press: Interpersonal Influence in Relations Between CEOs and Journalists and the Consequences for Press Reporting About Firms and Their Leadership

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.