We draw on behavioral strategy, terror management, and post traumatic growth theories to examine how a sudden director death may affect firm risk-taking. Two opposing predictions are developed. One is that a director death can trigger anxiety, prompting a CEO to become less committed to his or her job and decreasing a firm's risk-taking tendency. Alternatively, the passing of a director may evoke death reflection, inducing a CEO to pursue higher-order goals and initiate more projects with substantial uncertainties. Results based on a sample of publicly traded firms in the United States suggest that while a director death may diminish firm long-term investment, this event could fuel strategic nonconformity. Our findings suggest that the impact of director death on firm strategies could be more nuanced than the existing literature has suggested.

我们利用行为策略、恐怖管理和创伤后成长理论来研究董事突然死亡如何影响公司的冒险行为。提出了两个相反的预测。其一是董事死亡会引发焦虑，促使 CEO 对工作的忠诚度降低，并降低公司的冒险倾向。或者，董事的去世可能会引发死亡反思，促使 CEO 追求更高层次的目标，并启动更多具有重大不确定性的项目。基于美国上市公司样本的结果表明，虽然董事死亡可能会减少公司的长期投资，但这一事件可能会加剧战略上的不一致。我们的研究结果表明，董事死亡对公司战略的影响可能比现有文献所暗示的更为微妙。