Steady at the helm: how CEO early-life disaster experience shapes CEO resilience
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: CEOs’ central role in navigating crises makes their resilience—the capacity to withstand and positively adapt to adversity—highly consequential. Drawing on imprinting theory, we propose that CEOs’ early-life disaster experience can foster such resilience. Consistent with the ‘broaden-and-build’ logic, we expect this capacity is reflected in a CEO’s ability to sustain a optimistic orientation in times of crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogenous shock, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis on S&P 500 CEOs over 2017–2022. We capture CEO optimism through the positive versus negative tone in CEOs’ emotional displays in earnings-call Q&A responses. We find that CEOs who experienced a disaster between ages 5 and 15 maintain a more optimistic orientation in crisis, and their firms exhibit stronger post-COVID performance recovery. By identifying early-life disaster experience as a foundation for CEO resilience, our findings advance research on the relationship between CEO private life experiences and firm outcomes.
Source: Journal of Business Research
Institution: University of Groningen
Language: English
Topic: Resilience and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,440
OpenAlex ID: W7221672133