題目：Effects of an Advancing Tenure on CEO Cognitive Complexity

摘要：We study howthe cognitive complexity of chief executive officers (CEOs) changes during their tenures. Drawing from prior theory and research, we argue that CEOs attain gradually greater role-specific knowledge, or expertise, as their tenures advance, which yieldsmore complex thinking. Beyond examining the main effect of CEOtenure on cognitive complexity, we consider three moderators of this relationship, each of which is expected to influence the accumulation of expertise over a CEO’s time in office: industry dynamism, industry jolts, and CEO positional power.We conduct our tests on a sample of 684 CEOs of public corporations. The analytic centerpiece of our study is a novel index of CEO cognitive complexity based on CEOs’ language patterns in the question-and-answer portions of quarterly conference calls. As part of our extensive theory of measurement, we provide evidence of the reliability and validity of our index. Our results indicate that CEOs, in general, experience substantial increases in cognitive complexity over their time in office.Examined moderators somewhat, but modestly, alter this general trajectory, and nonlinearities are not observed. We discuss the implications of our findings.

We study howthe cognitive complexity of chief executive officers (CEOs) changes during their tenures.

研究動(dòng)機(jī)：Even though these tenure-based outcomes are thought to be because of psychological changes in CEOs over their time in office, there is little understanding of what those changes actually are. Theorists have surmised various things. Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991) proposedanincreasing commitment to one’s paradigm as a CEO’s tenure advances, but no empirical work has explored such a construct.

研究發(fā)現(xiàn)：As CEOs’ tenures progress, their cognitive complexity increases; with every addition to their stock of expertise, CEOs become cognitively more complex. This trend is mildly amplified by systemic industry dynamism andmildly attenuated by industry jolts and CEO positional power.

除此之外：Recently, researchers have leveraged advances in digital technology to conduct computer-aided text analysis (CATA) for gauging cognitive processes—in ways that are highly reliable and not at all intrusive. Relying on automated content analysis of subjects’ pregenerated bodies of text (either written or spoken words), CATA researchers follow the well-supported premise that individuals’ cognitions are reflected in their spoken andwritten language patterns (Pennebaker et al. 2003). In their review of the psychological meaning of words, Tausczik and Pennebaker (2010) highlighted the history of research utilizing word usage and text analysis to tap into psychological constructs,including components of individual personality, attentional focus, and thinking styles. Highlighting roots back to Freud, the authors concluded that words are “the medium by which cognitive, personality, clinical, and social psychologists attempt to understand human beings” (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010, p. 25).