4 WAYS TO CHOOSE A CEO - CROWN HEIR, HORSE RACE, COUP-DETAT, AND COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH

Most attempts to understand CEO succession fail to adequately differentiate the various ways by which CEOs are chosen. This article presents a conceptual framework that identifies four kinds of CEO succession processes, distinguished according to two key factors: political dynamics (who rules?) and the candidate search (are preferences known in advance?). Our main point is that the response of organizational stakeholders to CEO successions - (a) whether the process is perceived as fair, (b) whether the chosen successor is seen as good for an organization's future, and (c) the extent of disruption attending the leadership change - reflects how the politics and the search are managed. How internal and external stakeholders respond to a CEO succession can affect a new CEO's capacity for exercising effective leadership. Examples of each type (Apple, General Motors, Kodak, and Procter & Gamble) are offered and implications are drawn for researchers and for human resource executives. (C) 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.