TMT replacement mediates CEO succession's effect on strategic change for two antecedents, but not for involuntary CEO turnover

Wangrow, Schepker & Barker (2022, Journal of General Management 50(2): 164–176) test top management team (TMT) replacement as a mediator between three "structural events associated with CEO succession" — pre-succession firm performance, hiring an outsider as CEO, and involuntary CEO turnover — and post-succession strategic change. The mediation is conditional, not universal: "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." Involuntary turnover behaves differently: "Involuntary CEO turnover is found to be directly related to post-succession strategic change, with no significant mediating effects from TMT replacement."

This sharpens the one-line summary in claim-executive-succession-restructuring-runs-through-actor-action ("mediated by whether the new CEO also replaces the top management team") into a three-way split: two of three succession antecedents route through TMT replacement, one has a direct, unmediated path. The paper frames the question as motivated by upper echelons theory and resource dependence theory — that CEO succession alone is an incomplete account of "leadership change," and TMT replacement is the specific broader leadership-change event that carries part of the effect through.

Access is abstract-level only — the paper's own self-archived deposit at e-Publications@Marquette, fetched directly, not a search summary — so exact coefficients, significance levels, and sample construction are unconfirmed. [unverified-mechanism — abstract only]. Verification against the SAGE full text is routed to question-verify-executive-succession-mediation-wangrow-2022, which remains open: two independent access attempts (2026-07-09 and 2026-08-01) have both 403'd on every publisher and repository PDF route tried.