Chief executive officers (CEOs) have drawn out been recognized as the principal architects of corporate strategy and major catalysts of organizational change (Andrews.

Chief executive officers (CEOs) have drawn out been recognized as the principal architects of corporate strategy and major catalysts of organizational change (Andrews, 1971; Child, 1972) and the expanse to which CEOs can force change in corporate strategy is speculation to be determined largely through the power they possess and for what reason they decide to wield it (Child, 1972) Despite the apparent centrality of CEOs' power to the phenomenon of firm-level strategic change, however, research in succession this relationship is severely limited (Hardy, 1996) and an empirical association between these sum of two units constructs has yet to be established. This is surprising, given that the research onward CEOs' power is extensive, having identified a wide variety of important organization-related issues on which powerful CEOs may have a significant influence, like as the structure of their acknowledge compensation packages (Westphal and Zajac, 1994 1998 2001) their firms' board composition (Westphal and Zajac, 1995) and financial performance (Haleblian and Finkelstein, 1993; Daily and Johnson 1997) their successors' characteristics (Zajac and Westphal, 1996a), and their admit job security (Boeker, 1992).

The dearth of research in succession the relationship between CEOs' power and corporate strategic change may be a reflection of by what means studies of CEOs' power have typically been deportment ed By and large, these investigations have protoplasted and tested direct associations between power and the results of interest, but power describes simply the ability to bring about a preferr or intended general intent (Weber, 1947; Dahl, 1957; Russell, 1957) Consequently the theoretical linkage between CEOs' power and its consecutions requires an understanding of CEOs' selections and intentions (i.e., cognitive orientation). Furthermore, hypothesizing direct connections necessitates that cognitive orientations be uniform and motivating across CEO For example, Zajac and Westphal (Westphal and Zajac, 1994 1995; Zajac and Westphal, 1995 1996a, 1996b) have examined for what cause powerful CEOs may influence a number of board-level decisions. In these studies, CEOs' cognitive orientations played a critical character in establishing the direction of the hypothesized associations between power set ups and outcomes, but the CEOs' cognitive orientations were not assessed. Instead, convincing theoretical arguments or plausible assumptions were made for CEOs' likely choices For instance, Zajac and Westphal drew upon psychological, social psychological, and organization science literatures to argue that CEO ordinarily elect successors (Zajac and Westphal, 1996a) and novel board members (Westphal and Zajac, 1995) who are demographically similar to them. Likewise, they made the plausible assumption that CEO pick director candidates with prior experience onward passive rather than active boards, because they are primarily interested in controlling their have boards (Zajac and Westphal, 1996b) Their empirical findings generally supported their hypotheses.

In contrast to the choices and intentions associated with the power issues previously studied, CEOs' cognitive orientations toward corporate strategy appear to be highly variable. For example, a certain senior managers are apparently earnestly more committed to the strategic status quo than others (Hambrick, Geletkanycz, and Fredrickson, 1993) to what degree a CEO decides to use his or her power to influence a firm's strategic direction is likely to be affected on his or her cognitive strategic orientation, as it is that power and cognitive orientation interact to influence firm-level strategy. Therefore, predictions about in what way CEOs may use their power to influence corporate strategy require a means of modeling and explicitly assessing not single CEOs' power but also their cognitive orientations.

In this studious mood we examine how newly appointed CEOs' power and cognitive orientations interact to influence a challenging adumbration of strategic change, referred to as corporate strategic refocusing. Newly appointed CEO frequently take office just prior to major corporate-level strategic change initiatives (Kesner and Sebora, 1994; Westphal and Fredrickson, 2001) and, thus, are likely to be heavily involved with organizational change efforts. Whether they use their power initially to support the status quo or engage in corporate refocusing may hang on their experience as "heir apparent," which portray by actions the extent to which they have been socialized to the CEO position at their predecessors. Heir apparent experience entails a cognition-shaping place of insider-related events that has particular bearing forward a new CEO's strategic change choices and intentions. We concentrate upon corporate refocusing here because it appears to be a sufficiently challenging kind of organizational transformation thus as to require both a shift in strategic orientation and a flat of power that other kinds of strategic change do not. Therefore, it should be an appropriate words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in which to study the force of CEOs' power.