The Influence of CEO Tenure and Attitude Toward Change on Organizational Approaches to Innovation

Using Miles and Snow’s typology as a measure for organizational approach toward innovation, this study investigates the effect of CEOs’ attitudes toward change on the extent of emphasis on innovation in competitive strategies. The data come from multiple respondents at nonprofit organizations and are gathered in a manner that eliminates the possibility of common method variance, a problem that has plagued past studies linking executives’ attitudes and organization-level innovation. The findings suggest that organizations headed by CEOs with more liberal attitudes toward change follow prospector strategies characterized by high levels of exploration to develop innovations. Meanwhile, organizations managed by CEOs who have more conservative attitudes toward change were found to focus more on defender strategies that exploit existing advantages rather than innovations. Increasing CEO tenure was found to positively moderate this relationship.