Professionalization and the CEO effect over the very long run

Michael Aldous, Philip T. Fliers and John D. Turner

No 2026/08, QBS Working Paper Series from Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Business School

Abstract: This paper introduces a new explanation for the time variation in the extent to which CEOs matter for firm performance: the professionalization of the role. We explore whether increased access to specialized knowledge and greater codification of executive responsibilities rendered CEOs increasingly consequential for firm outcomes over time. Using a history-to-theory framework, we theorize how individual CEO characteristics account for temporal variation in the CEO effect in the United Kingdom. Then, using a hand-collected dataset of the largest 100 UK companies between 1900 and 2009, we find that the CEO effect in the UK varies between 6 and 17 percent and that professionalization accounts for an increasing share of relative explanatory power of the CEO effect over time.

Keywords: CEO effect; Professionalization; Upper Echelons Theory; Managerial Discretion; History to Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:qmsrps:202608

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