Executive Turnover and Breakthrough Innovation: The Mediating Role of Strategic Persistence

Breakthrough innovation is a key driver propelling listed companies toward sustained success and reinforcing their competitive edge in the market. However, frequent changes in core executives make it more challenging for enterprises to achieve breakthrough innovation. On the one hand, changes in senior management may disrupt an organization's existing R&D process and technological innovation resources, bringing risks and uncertainties to the organization and thereby increasing the difficulty of enhancing the breakthrough level of enterprise innovation. On the other hand, executive changes will bring about new successors. Executives with different leadership styles and cognitive levels will have a significant impact on the arrangement of an enterprise's innovation resources, thereby influencing the breakthrough innovation of the enterprise. Meanwhile, this study holds that strategic continuity plays a mediating role in it. Executive changes alter the strategic direction, strategic goals, organizational culture and core values of an enterprise, thereby hindering strategic persistence. Strategic continuity maintains the coherence of the enterprise's innovation resource arrangement and the continuity of innovation technology projects. This continuity expands the research cycle and depth of the R&D team on projects, creating more favorable conditions for the generation of breakthrough innovation achievements. We further verified our hypothesis through an empirical analysis of the panel data of 610 listed companies in China.