Penn State Smeal College of Business, United States
After decades of research, much more is known about the important outcomes of CEO psychological traits than about their antecedents. CEO humility has been a key psychological trait which theory and evidence suggest positively influences a variety of firm outcomes, such as firm performance and employee commitment. We build a theory of CEO hiring broadly by exploring the important question of why, given the many benefits of CEO humility, some firms hire executives higher in the trait for their open CEO position while others do not. Integrating theory and evidence about executive job demands and the role of perceptions of candidates’ psychological traits in employee selection, we develop and test a theory regarding the perception of executive job demands and psychological trait fit in CEO hiring. Specifically, we theorize that perceptions of executive job demands for a given CEO position are influential drivers of the CEO hiring process as boards seek to hire CEOs whose psychological traits fit with their perception of executive job demands associated with the opening. Applying our theory to the question of hiring of executives higher in humility for open CEO positions, we find support in a sample of CEO changes in S&P 500 firms.
