What does the new boss think?: How new leaders' cognitive communities and recent “top-job” success affect organizational change and performance

Leader succession often occurs because a performance decline highlights the need for change within an organization. When this need is especially high, successors are likely to be drawn from different cognitive communities than those of the replaced incumbents. Successors representing different cognitive communities carry out more change immediately after succession. This increased, rapid change will be most effective when the new leaders have had successful recent “top-job” experience. When successors lack recent top-job success, too much change too soon will actually hurt performance. We find moderate support for these relationships using panel data from the USA's National Football League.