Executive Recruitment and the Development of Interfirm Organizations

The authors appreciate the thoughtful comments of Howard Aldrich, William Evan, and Mayer Zald on an earlier version of this article. This study develops a general model of the relationship between variables measuring organizational environments and executive succession within organizations, with particular emphasis on the role of executive movement in developing stable patterns of interorganizational interaction.1 Such factors as (1) the number of organizations in the industry, (2) the difference in industry concentration from a median value, (3) the growth rate in industry sales, (4) the rate of technological change, (5) the average debt to equity ratio, and (6) the average firm size are related to characteristics of executive recruitment for 20 manufacturing industries. It is found that the movement of executives between firms, which is one form of interorganizational communication, is consistent with hypotheses dealing with the possibility of developing coordinated structures of interorganizational behavior.