CEO Change Under Authoritarian State Capitalism

Written By Philipp Kern

Professor Anna Grosman of IMEG, alongside Prof Tomasz Mickiewicz, Dr Ekaterina Aleksandrova and Prof Xiaohui Lui, has published a study on CEO change under authoritarian state capitalism in the journal Economic Systems.

The study examines how CEO changes affect firm growth in Russia's authoritarian state capitalist system, focusing on the moderating role of organizational complexity. The authors investigate whether complexity makes CEO transitions more disruptive in the short term, drawing on information processing theory. They find that complexity (measured either by firm size, membership in a business group, or international trade) negatively moderates the relationship between CEO change and short-term firm growth. The study uses Russian manufacturing firms (2005-2016) to show that in authoritarian systems, new CEOs face greater challenges due to personalized authority structures and political networks. This extends existing CEO turnover literature by identifying when and why leadership changes may harm short-term performance.

The article is available in open access.

Philipp Kern

Senior Lecturer in the Institute for International Management and Entrepreneurship at Loughborough University London

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