Who Shall Leave? the Experience of Departing Executives and Firm Discontinuous Strategic Renewal

We examined how executive departure affected a firm’s discontinuous strategic renewal. We proposed that the team- and firm-specific experiences of departing executives would have contrasting effects on a firm’s propensity for discontinuous renewal. In addition, such effects would vary with firms’ prior experience with strategic renewal. We found support for our hypotheses in the U.S. wireless telecommunications service industry, which faced the challenge of transiting from analog to digital technology between 1991 and 1998. By implication, our study sheds some light on the practical choice of managerial reshuffle in a firm’s discontinuous strategic renewal.