The changing of the guard: Top management characteristics, organizational strain, and antitrust offending

From within an organizational strain perspective, this paper examines the effects of managerial succession, CEO background, decentralized management, and product dominant strategies on the reported corporate antitrust offending levels of 43 basic manufacturing companies over a 22-year period. In the aggregate, findings suggest that past illegal involvement predicts future offending; companies headed by finance and administrative CEOs have higher offending levels than do firms headed by CEOs from other backgrounds; a turnover in top management generally decreases offending levels; the pursuit of product dominant strategies increases the number of anticompetitive acts; and offending levels are unrelated to whether new leaders are recruited from within or outside the firm, whether the CEO is also Chair of the Board of Directors, or whether management is centralized or decentralized. The effects of some variables on corporate offending interact with firm performance.