The Cost of CEO Conflict Orientation: Exploring the Ramifications of CEO Agreeableness

: This study builds on the upper echelons tradition to examine the effects of CEO conflict orientation on relevant organizational characteristics and outcomes, such as CEO compensation and strategic change behavior. This is examined by assessing levels of the personality trait “agreeableness”. While high levels of trait agreeableness may seem like an ideal characteristic, especially in top management team settings, we argue that there is an optimal and moderate level of this trait when examining its effects on a firm’s propensity to engage in strategic change and performance in technologically intensive industries (TII), as well as perceived CEO value as exhibited by CEO pay. We show curvlinear relationships between CEO agreeableness CEO pay, as well as levels of strategic change and performance. We gather CEO characteristics data utilizing a videometric approach.