Career Variety's Role in Firm Performance & The Intervention of Temporal Focus

Abstract

Career variety trends have changed over the past decade. Businessmen and women are spending less time at one company and gaining more experience in different roles, at different firms, in different industries. To unearth when a more diversified career is impactful to firm performance, one must address the influence of temporal focus. Temporal focus allows one to understand how a CEO thinks about his or her past, present, and future. CEOs with past, present, or future foci think about their past experineces and current situations in ways that impact the decisions they make for their firms. This study finds that high career variety is significantly influential to a firm's performance when the CEO has high future temporal focus.