This study investigates how the prestige distance between a new chief executive officer (CEO) and the chairperson of the board (COB) can influence changes in the firm’s level of diversification. We draw on social comparison theory and activity theory to argue that the prestige distance between a CEO and COB alters the interaction and communication between the two leaders, and accordingly influences the firm’s ability to change its diversification posture. We test our hypotheses on a dataset of 135 firms and find that the prestige distance in CEO-COB dyads has a U-shaped relationship with the change in the firm’s level of diversification. Our results reveal that low CEO-COB prestige distance, and to a lesser extent high CEO-COB prestige distance, creates conditions for greater changes in the firm’s level of diversification. Further, we find that this U-shaped relationship is more pronounced when the CEO-COB dyad has greater age differences and flattens when the dyad shares age similarity.

本研究调查了新任首席执行官 (CEO) 与董事会主席 (COB) 之间的声望距离如何影响公司多元化水平的变化。我们借鉴社会比较理论和活动理论认为，CEO和COB之间的声望距离改变了两位领导者之间的互动和沟通，从而影响了公司改变多元化姿态的能力。我们在 135 家公司的数据集上检验了我们的假设，发现 CEO-COB 二元组中的声望距离与公司多元化水平的变化呈 U 型关系。我们的研究结果表明，较低的 CEO-COB 声望距离，以及在较小程度上较高的 CEO-COB 声望距离，为公司多元化水平的更大变化创造了条件。更远，