The impact of a CEO’s task knowledge on the leader life cycles

Guided by the advancements of research on organizational learning, this thesis theoretically analyzes the impact of different dimensions of a CEO‟s task knowledge on company performance over the CEO life cycle. For this purpose, it attempts to conceptualize the previously fragmented literatures on company/industry based, experience based and personality based task knowledge into an integrated concept of task knowledge within the leader life cycle theory. As a result of this, consistent hypotheses on the positive influence of higher task knowledge and the concrete impact on the shape of the leader life cycle curve have been derived. Conclusively, the thesis might play a pioneering role within the progression from a pure demographic characteristics based methodology to direct psychological personality measures of an executive‟s cognitive base. The empirical validation deserves further attention.
Keywords: Leader life cycle theory; CEO life cycle; Task knowledge; Position-specific skills