Management Characteristics and Corporate Risk-taking: An Overall Review

Abstract

Abstract. We review the literature on the relationships between management characteristics and corporate risk-taking over the period 1985~2015 and find that the two types of management characteristics: the physical characteristics and the psychological ones lead to different risk-taking behavior and firm outcomes. Generally, the physical traits have impact on taking risk by psychological bias and the psychological traits affect risk-taking behavior directly. We also find that the researchers always use the traits of CEO or top management as the proxies to explain management behaviors.