Everything Under My Control: CEO Characteristics and the Evaluation of Middle Manager Performance in Small and Medium-Sized Firms

摘要

Studies of small and medium-sized enterprises have provided evidenceudthat CEOs of such firms can have a dominating influence on firm activities. Drawingudon upper echelons theory, we analyze the influence of CEO personality (CEO internaludlocus of control), CEO ownership and CEO education on the evaluation of middleudmanager performance. In line with our expectations, we find evidence for a directudeffect of CEO ownership (negative) and CEO education (positive) on the use ofudobjective performance evaluations and for a direct effect of the CEO's internal locusudof control on the use of subjective performance evaluations. Moreover, we provideudevidence for a moderating role of both CEO ownership and education with respect to the influence of the CEO's locus of control on the use of subjective evaluations.udWe use a sample of 247 small and medium-sized manufacturing firms to test our hypotheses.