View article

Existing research has demonstrated that a favorable public perception of CEOs has a positive impact on firms; however, researchers have paid less attention to how a change in leadership through CEO succession may trigger the risk of a negative evaluation and prompt the firm to address such risk. We argue that not all changes in leadership require the risk mitigation response and suggest that the firm is more likely to do so in the case of a gender-specific change in its leadership that lowers the ascribed status of the firm’s CEO, i.e., a male-to-female CEO change. Specifically, firms are more likely to pursue highly visible and status-enhancing stakeholder management strategies, such as establishing a corporate philanthropic foundation, when they experience a male-to-female CEO succession. However, this effect becomes attenuated when the new CEO possesses a higher achieved status derived from their …