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Related Experiment Videos

Are leaders portable?

Boris Groysberg1, Andrew N McLean, Nitin Nohria

  • 1Harvard Buisness School, Boston, USA. bgroysberg@hbs.edu

Harvard Business Review
|May 3, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Management talent transfer is complex. Executive success depends on aligning skills like general management, strategic, industry, relationship, and company-specific human capital with the new environment's challenges.

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Area of Science:

  • Business Administration
  • Organizational Behavior
  • Human Capital Management

Background:

  • The market often assumes management talent is transferable, evidenced by stock price increases when executives move between major companies.
  • Conventional wisdom posits human capital as either general management (transferable) or company-specific (not transferable).

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the long-term performance of executives transitioning between companies.
  • To determine the conditions under which management talent is transferable.
  • To challenge and refine existing theories of human capital transferability.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of the career trajectories of 20 former General Electric executives who became CEOs of other major organizations.
  • Categorization and evaluation of five distinct types of human capital: general management, strategic, industry, relationship, and company-specific.

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Main Results:

  • Executive performance post-transition was highly variable.
  • Transferability of management talent is contingent on the alignment between the executive's skills and the challenges of the new organizational environment.
  • The study identified specific skill types (strategic, industry, relationship, company-specific) that significantly impact performance.

Conclusions:

  • Management talent transfer is not universally applicable; success hinges on environmental fit.
  • Existing dichotomies of human capital (general vs. company-specific) are insufficient.
  • Company-specific skills and other nuanced human capital types can be valuable assets in new leadership roles.