Donald C. Hambrick’s research while affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and other places

... Third, with innovative methodological approaches we align the underlying theoretical assumptions concerning the micro-level behavioral building blocks of leadership communication with the intra-team interaction patterns and communication dynamics that unfold in response. Doing so, we seek to provide impulses for a new type of leadership theory building, that is, theorizing at the level of concrete behaviors and its intersection to concrete team communication behaviors, where conceptualization and operationalization align (Banks et al., 2021;Fischer et al., 2023;Hemshorn de Sanchez et al., 2022;Kozlowski, 2022;Van Maanen et al., 2007). ...

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Exploring Respectful Inquiry in Leader-Team Interactions: The Differential Effect of Leader Question Asking and Listening on Team Interaction Dynamics in Decision Making

... Upper echelons theory (Hambrick, 2007;Hambrick & Mason, 1984) postulates that top managers' characteristics influence their decision-making, thus shaping such organizational outcomes as innovation capability. It also acknowledges that a team of top managers, rather than a single top manager, typically makes strategic decisions (Hambrick, 2018). Since TMTs must make strategic decisions under ambiguous circumstances and face more stimuli than they can process thoroughly (Hambrick, 2018), their decisions are guided by their inherent characteristics instead of purely objective analysis (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). ...

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The road less travelled: An exploratory study of the association between top management team dissimilarity and innovation capability

... Put differently, in most cases, the concern is more about whether leaders can steer their firms toward more radical innovation outcomes, and less about the adoption of specific management practices (O'Connor and Rice, 2013;Slater et al., 2014). This view is consistent with the strategic leadership perspective (Singh et al., 2023), which emphasizes the importance of top-level actors (as the case of CEOs) -namely strategic leaders-in explaining organizational outcomes because they take full responsibility for their firm's behavior by shaping strategy formulation, resource orchestration, and the work environment (Vera and Crossan, 2004;Samimi et al., 2020;Hambrick and Wowak, 2021). This is particularly true when considering radical innovation as an organizational outcome, given its inherently challenging nature and because it requires the greater involvement of strategic leaders than other types of innovation that are more conventional and/or related to day-to-day work (e.g., Menguc et al., 2014;O'Connor, 2008). ...

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Family CEO and radical innovation: A stewardship perspective

... When CEOs increase or decrease the number of GNPIs based on their political ideologies, they simultaneously express their political identities and their occupational identities as the top decision-makers in their firms (cf. Fuchs et al., 2019;Wowak et al., 2022). Early social identity research often assumed that only one identity could be salient at any given time, suggesting that as one identity becomes more prominent, others necessarily become less so (see Ashforth et al., 2008;Sluss & Ashforth, 2007). ...

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Red, blue, and green? The association between CEOs' political ideologies and green new product introductions

... More specifically, while researchers interested in other individual-based social evaluations like CEO celebrity (Lovelace et al. , 2022 or CEO status (Graffin et al. 2008) successfully reduced fragmentation by synthesizing influential findings, research on strategic leader reputation is still missing a comprehensive review (Sohn & Lariscy 2012). This is surprising, considering how theoretically fundamental and meaningful the notion of reputation is (Barnett & Pollock, 2012;Lange et al. 2011), and how practically relevant it is for strategic leaders in today's world, where reputation-forming information about strategic leaders of a company is readily available not only to insiders but also the public. ...

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Strategic leader reputation: a review and research agenda

... Navigating stakeholder relationships is central to the role of a CEO and is associated with key strategic outcomes (Gamache et al., 2020;Hambrick and Wowak, 2021b;Neville, 2022). When stakeholders grow dissatisfied with the firm and its leaders' efforts, they often turn to activism (DesJardine and Shi, 2023;Lee et al., 2022). Stakeholder activism constitutes instances in which stakeholders mobilize to place pressure on a firm to adopt certain policies and practices they believe advance their, the firm's, or society's interests (Eesley et al., 2016;Vasi and King, 2012). ...

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Understanding the Situational Antecedents of CEO Regulatory Focus

... Thus, apart from experiencing events essential to the development of different pathways, to switch and reconcile the differences between pathways leaders must possess the ability to process and think in a multiplex and nuanced fashion. Meaning, they must have a high level of cognitive complexity (Bieri, 1955;Graf-Vlachy et al., 2020;Hale, 1980). Leaders high on cognitive complexity have a higher tolerance for ambiguity, can consider alternative views, and show greater strategic flexibility (Nadkarni & Narayanan, 2007;Streufert et al., 1968). ...

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Multiple Pathways to Leadership: A Revision and Extension of the CIP Leadership Framework Original Manuscript Organizational Psychology Review 1-25

... In the case of an authentic leader, this individual should be allowed to have a significant impact on determining the requirements of the next hire because they have been cognizant of their own strengths and weaknesses. A successful leader may even adopt a generativity mindset that commits them to the development of next generation leadership in identifying and preparing a successor (Joshi et al., 2021). Otherwise, the individual should have a more limited impact SENIOR LEADER SELECTION on determining requirements as poor self-awareness could lead to highly biased estimations of future requirements. ...

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Selecting Senior Leaders in the Public Sector: Challenges and Best Practices

... The field of corporate nonmarket activities is undergoing significant changes as firms increasingly consolidate Corporate Political Activity (CPA) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agendas. These trends require greater attention from C-suite executives, who now face a growing set of socio-political issues, sometimes demanding that they take official positions on controversial issues (Hambrick & Wowak, 2021). In this shift we can see the emergence of a new, multidimensional framework -Corporate Socio-Political Engagement (CSPE). ...

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Socio-political Engagement in Business: Building Resilience and Driving Change

... Although family firms often prefer family members in CEO roles, many publiclisted firms appoint nonfamily CEOs (Kang & Kim, 2016). Research suggests that nonfamily CEOs often bring new strategic perspectives and are more inclined to drive transformative change (Quigley et al., 2019). Conversely, family CEOs may be constrained by the need to align their strategies with family priorities, limiting their flexibility in adopting new initiatives (Thams et al., 2020). ...

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Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting in Family Firms: The Critical Role of CEO Attributes