Our paper contributes to the literature on executive
successors other than the CEO by adding empirical
evidence for CFO succession. We propose that the
selection of outside successors may be contingent on the
succession context and on the type of managerial role.
We postulate that transferability of CFO-specific skills
across firms and industries reduces impediments to
selecting successors from outside the firm and industry.
Empirical evidence on 145 CFO and 159 CEO changes
reveals two key findings: outside CFO nominations are
more frequent, and outside CFO succession has a more
accentuated link with poor pre-succession firm
performance than outside CEO succession. pdf 2013
