Leader succession: The impact of leaders’ background characteristics on organizations’ performance

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The present study aims to reconcile contradictory results of previous studies regarding the impact of the new leader’s origin and levels of general and functional experience on the firm’s performance after the leader succession event. We analyze 52 succession events drawn from longitudinal public records of professional Portuguese football clubs from seasons 2004-2005 to 2008-2009. Results suggest that outsider leaders have a positive effect on post succession performance in the short term, and that leader’s general experience has neither short-term nor long-term positive effect and finally leaders’ functional experience has positive effect in the long term but not in the short term.