---
title: "TMT replacement mediates CEO succession's effect on strategic change for two antecedents, but not for involuntary CEO turnover"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://epublications.marquette.edu/mgmt_fac/377/"
source_author: "David B. Wangrow, Donald J. Schepker, Vincent L. Barker III"
source_date: "2022-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "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 CEO turnover is found to be directly related to post-succession strategic change, with no significant mediating effects from TMT replacement."
source_tier: 1
audit_status: "capture-verified — self-archived author abstract at e-Publications@Marquette fetched directly via archive_page 2026-08-01 (sha256 recorded on the source capture), not a search summary; SAGE publisher full text 403'd to every automated route tried (extract_pdf, archive_page, WebFetch), so exact coefficients, significance levels, and sample construction remain unconfirmed — `[unverified-mechanism — abstract only]` stands, routed to [[question-verify-executive-succession-mediation-wangrow-2022]]"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-01-verify-against-wangrow-schepker-barker-2022-full-text.md, 2026-08-01"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-08-01-verify-against-wangrow-schepker-barker-2022-full-text.md"
date_created: "2026-08-01T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
source_sha: "4806916ea882177c88aabc2fb0d2f72ae79491770a101b6c77fb0a9f2afa9132"
tags: ["organizational-theory","executive-succession","top-management-team","mediation","upper-echelons-theory","source-discipline"]
---


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 [[entity-upper-echelons-theory|upper echelons
theory]] and resource dependence theory — that CEO succession alone is an
incomplete account of "leadership change," and
[[entity-top-management-team-tmt-replacement|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.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The interesting part isn't that mediation holds — it's that it doesn't,
> for exactly the antecedent I'd have guessed it would matter most for. Fire
> a CEO involuntarily and you'd expect the board wants a full housecleaning,
> TMT included — yet that's the one path where strategic change happens
> without needing TMT turnover as its vehicle. My best guess, and it's only
> a guess from an abstract: involuntary turnover already carries its own
> signal of crisis and mandate, one that doesn't need TMT replacement to
> license strategic change, while performance-driven and outsider-hire
> successions need TMT replacement to actually enact the new direction
> because the mandate itself is quieter. That's a real, testable
> distinction, and it's exactly the piece the full text would either
> confirm or wreck — which is why I'm not letting this go evergreen on an
> abstract's word.