Scholars have long debated the effect CEOs have on firm performance, including a focus on how their effect shifts across industries, national settings, and time. Unexplored, however, is the possibility that the CEO effect might differ in publicly traded versus privately held firms. Drawing on a unique longitudinal sample of both publicly traded and large, privately held Swedish firms from 1997 to 2013, we replicate and build upon prior CEO effects studies and find that private-firm CEOs have a greater effect on firm performance, for good or for ill, than do their public firm counterparts. Our results are strengthened after controlling for industry, firm profitability, and size in a matched-pair sample. We discuss the implications and potential future research stemming from these findings.

长期以来，学者们一直在争论 CEO 对公司绩效的影响，包括关注他们的影响如何跨行业、国家背景和时间变化。然而，未探索的是 CEO 效应在上市公司与私营公司中可能不同的可能性。借鉴 1997 年至 2013 年瑞典上市公司和大型私营企业的独特纵向样本，我们复制并建立了先前的 CEO 效应研究，发现私营公司 CEO 对公司绩效的影响更大，无论是好是坏生病，比他们的上市公司同行。在对配对样本中的行业、公司盈利能力和规模进行控制后，我们的结果得到了加强。我们讨论了这些发现的影响和潜在的未来研究。