Verify against Wangrow, Schepker & Barker (2022) full text: is the succession→strategic-change effect mediated by whether the new CEO replaces the top management team?

This capture answers question-verify-executive-succession-mediation-wangrow-2022, which flagged the mediation finding used in claim-executive-succession-restructuring-runs-through-actor-action as [unverified-mechanism — abstract only]. The task was to obtain and read the Wangrow, Schepker & Barker (2022) full text and confirm or correct the mediation result.

Outcome up front: full text was not obtained this session either. Every access route tried this run 403'd or came up empty (see "What was tried" below). The finding below therefore rests on the same abstract-level access as before — but re-confirmed independently, this time via direct archive_page fetch of the paper's own institutional-repository landing page (not search-engine summary, not Crossref metadata), with a recorded sha256 receipt. The [unverified-mechanism — abstract only] flag on the prior note stands and should not be lifted by this capture.

What was tried (full-text access attempts, all unsuccessful)

• extract_pdf on the Marquette direct-PDF link (.../cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1377&context=mgmt_fac) — HTTP 403.
• archive_page on the same PDF URL — HTTP 403.
• archive_page on the paper's "ADA Accessible Version" .docx (same viewcontent.cgi endpoint, type=additional) — HTTP 403.
• WebFetch on the same PDF URL directly — HTTP 403.
• WebFetch on the SAGE publisher page (journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03063070221126267) — HTTP 403 (paywalled).
• Wayback Machine availability API for the Marquette PDF URL — no snapshot exists ({}).
• Web search for mirrors (ResearchGate, CORE.ac.uk, SSRN, Academia.edu) — none found; ResearchGate indexes only the authors' other papers, not this one.
• Cross-check against co-author Donald J. Schepker's CV (fetched via extract_pdf, tls verified) — confirms the paper's existence, correct citation (Journal of General Management, DOI 10.1177/0306307022), and that it descends from an earlier 2014 AOM conference presentation, "How do new CEOs implement change? The mediating effects of TMT turnover on new CEO ability to implement strategic changes" — but the CV carries no additional result detail.

What did resolve: the paper's own institutional-repository landing page at e-Publications@Marquette (https://epublications.marquette.edu/mgmt_fac/377/), which displays the full abstract as deposited by lead author David B. Wangrow. This is the authors' own venue self-archiving their own accepted-version abstract — Tier 1 per the rubric ("a researcher's own writeup of their own work") — fetched via archive_page (sha256 above), not a search summary.

Claim: TMT replacement mediates two of the three succession-related antecedents studied — not succession generally

Claim type: technical-mechanism (how/whether a hypothesized causal path holds). Requires Tier 1-2; met (Tier 1, author-self-archived abstract, direct fetch, quote-checked verbatim).

The study examines three "structural events associated with CEO succession" as antecedents of post-succession strategic change — pre-succession firm performance, hiring an outsider as CEO, and involuntary CEO turnover — and tests whether top management team (TMT) replacement mediates each relationship. The abstract states: "Significant mediated relationships are found in which TMT replacement mediates the relationships of pre-succession firm performance and hiring an outsider as CEO with post-succession strategic change."

So the answer to "is the succession→strategic-change effect mediated by TMT replacement?" is conditionally yes — for two of the three antecedents — not a blanket mediation claim covering CEO succession as such. [unverified-mechanism — abstract only: exact coefficients, significance levels, and sample construction not confirmed against results/methods sections, which remain inaccessible].

provenance: Wangrow, D.B., Schepker, D.J., & Barker, V.L. III (2022). "When Does CEO Succession Lead to Strategic Change? The Mediating Role of Top Management Team Replacement." Journal of General Management, 50(2), 164-176. https://epublications.marquette.edu/mgmt_fac/377/

Claim: involuntary CEO turnover is directly related to strategic change, with no significant TMT-replacement mediation

Claim type: technical-mechanism. Requires Tier 1-2; met (same source/fetch as above).

The abstract is explicit about the exception: "Involuntary CEO turnover is found to be directly related to post-succession strategic change, with no significant mediating effects from TMT replacement." This is the load-bearing nuance for the topic question: mediation by TMT replacement is not a general property of the CEO-succession → strategic-change link — it holds for performance-driven and outsider-hire successions, but involuntary turnover appears to drive strategic change through some other, unmediated path. [unverified-mechanism — abstract only; the paper's own explanation for why involuntary turnover behaves differently was not accessible].

provenance: same as above.

Claim: the study frames CEO succession's leadership-change requirements as an open question, motivated by upper echelons and resource dependence theory

Claim type: definitional/framing (what the study is examining and why). Tier 3-4 acceptable for uncontested framing; this one clears Tier 1 anyway (same self-archived abstract).

The abstract opens: "While mandates for strategic change may accompany the selection of new Chief Executive Officer (CEOs), the broader set of leadership changes necessary for strategic change remains unclear," and states the analysis is "Motivated by upper echelons and resource dependence theories." This frames TMT replacement not as an afterthought but as the paper's central theoretical contribution: that CEO succession alone is an incomplete account of "leadership change," and the mediating question is which broader leadership-change events (TMT replacement in particular) carry the effect through to strategic change.

provenance: same as above.

Further leads

• The Forbes piece "Why CEO Succession Rarely Delivers Actual Change" (Benjamin Laker, 2026-04-02, forbes.com) surfaced in search and may discuss this or adjacent literature — not fetched or verified this run; Tier 3 at best, would need the underlying research it cites checked separately.
• Schepker's CV lists a 2017 meta-analysis, Schepker, Kim, Patel, Thatcher & Campion, "CEO succession, strategic change, and post-succession performance: A meta-analysis," The Leadership Quarterly 28: 701-720 — likely the broader empirical base this 2022 paper sits inside; not fetched this run.
• Schepker's CV also lists the 2014 AOM conference precursor (Wangrow, Schepker & Barker, "How do new CEOs implement change? The mediating effects of TMT turnover on new CEO ability to implement strategic changes," Philadelphia, 2014) — the same mediation question eight years before the 2022 journal publication; could clarify how the argument developed, not pursued this run.
• A prior WebSearch AI-generated summary (not a primary source, not verified) claimed the study "analyzed CEO turnovers from 2005 to 2009 at publicly traded U.S. manufacturing firms" — this specific sample-construction detail is [unverified-quant — needs primary, and possibly search-summary fabrication per the quote-provenance rule]; do not carry it into a claim-note without direct-text confirmation.
• The known-blocked route this session: epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi (both the PDF and the type=additional docx) 403'd across extract_pdf, archive_page, and WebFetch alike — worth adding to 00-meta/specs/sources.md's known-blocked list if this recurs on a future attempt, alongside ethw.org and the USPTO endpoints already logged there.

Safety flags

None. All fetched pages (Marquette repository landing page, Schepker CV PDF) were institutional/academic pages with no addressed-to-AI language, override language, claimed authority, tier self-assignment, file-system instructions, credential requests, or urgency framing. No adversarial content encountered this session.

Entity candidates

• Upper echelons theory (Hambrick & Mason, 1984) — concept — this paper is explicitly "motivated by" this theory; it is the older foundational framework the mediation argument is built on, not yet a vault entity.
• Resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) — concept — the second foundational theory this paper is built on, for the argument that new CEOs use external networks to attract TMT members with needed capital.
• David B. Wangrow — person — lead author, Marquette University, self-archived this paper in the institutional repository.
• Donald J. Schepker — person — co-author, University of South Carolina, Research Director of the Center for Executive Succession; his CV was the secondary confirming source this run.
• Vincent L. Barker III — person — co-author, University of Kansas.
• Top management team (TMT) replacement — concept — the mediator construct at the center of the topic question; distinct from CEO succession itself.
• Journal of General Management — concept/venue — publisher of record (SAGE), 2022, vol. 50 issue 2.