Torsten Wulf, Stephan Stubner

• Building on strategy-CEO fit research and organizational learning theory, we explore the relationship between CEO succession – specifically a certain skill set of the new CEO – and post-succession performance. For this purpose, we introduce the concept of position-specific skills of a new CEO and empirically test it using a sample of 59 CEO succession events that occurred between 1990 and 2005 in 50 of the largest publicly listed companies in Germany. Results show that position-specific skills of new CEOs actually have an influence on post-succession performance during the early tenure of a CEO. Thus, we conclude that organizational learning theory and position-specific skills of new CEOs offer a promising basis for executive succession research and that they deserve further attention.