We sample CEOs of the 2005 S&P 500 corporations to look at the relationship between experience in the CEO position of a different fi rm and the postsuccession fi nancial performance of the fi rm that they currently lead. We fi nd that experience in the CEO position is negatively related to fi rm performance. CEOs who directly move to their current CEO position from the previous one and those with job-specifi c experience in the same or related industry or at the helm of a previous company similar in size to the current one are associated with signifi cantly lower post-succession performance than those without prior CEO experience. The results contribute to the literatures on CEO succession, the performance effect of job-specifi c experience, and the transferability of human capital.

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In this paper, we examine the career histories of the chief executive officers (CEOs) affiliated with the 500 largest organizations in Europe and the 500 largest in the United States. Our purpose is to determine whether frequent career moves across employers, a phenomenon we label an “external labor market strategy,” brings greater career rewards than moves inside the same organization. The results reveal that an external labor market strategy is negatively related to career success. On both continents, CEOs who have spent a smaller fraction of their career in their current organization or have changed employers more often have taken a longer time from the start of their career to be promoted to the most influential corporate positions. The labor market institutions in the 22 countries sampled do not influence the relationship between an external labor market strategy and career success, while the specific geographic region in which the employers are located has a limited impact on this relationship. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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