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In the last few decades, we have developed a substantial body of knowledge about CEO succession. However, except for some studies of family businesses that lack direct applicability to nonfamily CEO succession, the past studies of succession have not examined the very first succession event in a firm, when the Founder-CEO is replaced, on a large-scale basis. The critical differences between later-stage succession and Founder-CEO succession include the higher level of attachment between Founder-CEOs and the firms they create, the much larger equity holdings of Founder-CEOs (which give them much more control of the firm), the fact that many Founder-CEOs remain in the firm (even though it is being run by their successors), and the fact that nearly all early-stage succession events involve outside successors (in contrast to later-stage succession research, which has focused on the insider-outsider distinction). These differences make it hard to extrapolate from later-stage succession findings to Founder-CEO succession. Therefore, in order to examine Founder-CEO succession, I used field research and grounded theory building to study the factors that should affect Founder-CEO succession in Internet start-ups. I find that there are two central intertemporal events that may affect Founder-CEO succession: The completion of product development and the raising of each round of financing from outside investors. I develop testable hypotheses about how each of these events affect the rate of succession, and then test these hypotheses using an event-history analysis of a unique dataset containing the succession histories of 202 Internet firms. My findings point to multiple "paradoxes of success" in which the Founder-CEO's success at achieving critical milestones actually causes the chance of Founder-CEO succession to rise dramatically.

AbstractFirms managed by the scions of founders continue to be prevalent in the United States despite the increase in shareholder activism over the last few decades, calling into question the argument that such organizational structures reduce firm value. Founder‐family successions are rare in high‐growth industries where the benefits of selecting from a larger pool of managers is significant. Rather, they tend to happen in low‐growth industries, in manufacturing/retail firms. Once we account for the differences in firm characteristics, we do not find that founder‐family successions reduce firm value. We explore a mechanism that compensates for the costs of choosing from a smaller pool of managers and document evidence consistent with family firms benefiting from improved labor relations.

This paper brings the notion of translation into dialogue with the growing literature on international hierarchies and the historical origins of the modern international order. Leveraging on the writings of Karl Marx, I draw parallels between the exchange of commodities and the translation of linguistic signs in order to unmask the inequalities and asymmetries that pervade the practice of translation. I then deploy these theoretical insights to illuminate the global constitution of the modern international order. In this Marx-inspired reading, the modern international order is cast as the 'universal equivalent' that has crystallized out of the asymmetries and contradictions that pervaded the global political economy of conceptual exchange in the long 19th century. As universal equivalent, the modern international order effectively functions as the socially recognized 'metalanguage' that undergirds the miracle of global translatability and makes international/interlingual relations possible on a global scale. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the analysis for the future of international/interlingual hierarchies and world order.

AbstractThis paper brings the notion of translation into dialogue with the growing literature on international hierarchies and the historical origins of the modern international order. Leveraging on the writings of Karl Marx, I draw parallels between the exchange of commodities and the translation of linguistic signs in order to unmask the inequalities and asymmetries that pervade the practice of translation. I then deploy these theoretical insights to illuminate the global constitution of the modern international order. In this Marx-inspired reading, the modern international order is cast as the 'universal equivalent' that has crystallized out of the asymmetries and contradictions that pervaded the global political economy of conceptual exchange in the long 19thcentury. As universal equivalent, the modern international order effectively functions as the socially recognized 'metalanguage' that undergirds the miracle of global translatability and makes international/interlingual relations possible on a global scale. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the analysis for the future of international/interlingual hierarchies and world order.