Roles Executives Play: CEOs, Behavioral Complexity, and Firm Performance

Abstract

This paper develops a model of executive leadership consisting of four competing roles: Vision Setter, Motivator, Analyzer, and Task Master. These four roles are operationalized and hypotheses are then tested concerning their relationships to three dimensions of firm performance using data collected from a sample of 916 top managers. Results suggest that CEOs with high "behavioral complexity" - the ability to play multiple, competing roles - produce the best firm performance, particularly with respect to business performance (growth and innovation) and organizational (stakeholder) effectiveness. Executive leadership role had little to do with firms' financial performance.