Steering sustainability: How CEO turnovers and executive profiles shape ESG performance
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2025-07-08
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en
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This study investigates whether CEO turnover influences firm-level ESG performance and whether this effect is moderated by specific CEO characteristics. Using 5.390 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2023, it applies two-way fixed effects regressions to examine the impact of CEO succession and executive traits, such as overconfidence, outsider status, duality, stockholding, legal origin, age, and gender on ESG scores. The results show that CEO turnover does not lead to systematic changes in ESG performance. Similarly, most CEO characteristics do not significantly alter the ESG trajectory following leadership change. However, a significant negative effect is observed when the incoming CEO originates from common law country, suggesting that governance traditions shape ESG engagement after succession. Yet this effect disappears once the legal origin of the firm is considered, indicating that structural context outweighs executive background. These findings highlight that succession planning alone may not safeguard ESG continuity: institutional environment play a more decisive role.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen