IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apbizr/v31y2025i4p692-720.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Three-way interaction effect of specialist CEOs, structural inertia, and environmental uncertainty on firm performance: evidence from Chinese manufacturing industry

Author

Listed:
  • Haoyang Zhou
  • Hong Liu
  • Wei Cao
  • Jinfan Zhou

Abstract

This research aims to further demystify the impact of specialist CEOs on firm performance. Drawing on the perspective of substitutes for leadership and organizational inertia theory, this research examines the three-way interaction effect of specialist CEOs, structural inertia and environmental uncertainty on firm performance. In study 1, panel data of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2011 to 2022 are used to examine our hypotheses. In study 2, a conducted survey from 196 manufacturing firms further corroborates the obtained results. Our findings show that specialist CEOs are positively related to firm performance, but structural inertia plays a substitute role in negatively moderating such relationships. Furthermore, environmental uncertainty is verified as a critical boundary condition to weaken the moderation effect. The implications of our findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Haoyang Zhou & Hong Liu & Wei Cao & Jinfan Zhou, 2025. "Three-way interaction effect of specialist CEOs, structural inertia, and environmental uncertainty on firm performance: evidence from Chinese manufacturing industry," Asia Pacific Business Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 692-720, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apbizr:v:31:y:2025:i:4:p:692-720
    DOI: 10.1080/13602381.2023.2299399
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13602381.2023.2299399
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13602381.2023.2299399?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:apbizr:v:31:y:2025:i:4:p:692-720. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FAPB20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.