While CEO effect scholars agree that variation in firm performance tends to persist over time and that CEOs’ performance contribution should be gauged against a changing context, recent CEO effect studies addressing these issues have made extreme but opposite claims concerning the magnitude of the CEO effect. We show why recent findings that indicate a much larger CEO effect are spurious. We also argue and empirically demonstrate that a multilevel model that includes autocorrelation can properly gauge CEOs’ performance contribution against a changing context while simultaneously avoiding confounding. Our empirical result shows that the opposite claim positing that the CEO effect is nearly indistinguishable from chance is likewise unwarranted. These findings have implications for CEO effect studies and other studies that use longitudinal firm performance data.

虽然首席执行官效应学者一致认为，公司绩效的变化往往会随着时间的推移而持续存在，并且首席执行官的绩效贡献应该根据不断变化的环境来衡量，但最近针对这些问题的首席执行官效应研究对首席执行官效应的程度提出了极端但相反的主张。我们将说明为什么最近表明 CEO 效应更大的研究结果是虚假的。我们还论证并实证证明，包含自相关的多层次模型可以根据不断变化的环境正确衡量首席执行官的绩效贡献，同时避免混淆。我们的实证结果表明，认为 CEO 效应与偶然几乎无法区分的相反主张同样是没有根据的。