Rice business expert available to discuss HP’s potential CEO shake-up

David Ruth
713-348-6327
druth@rice.edu

Rice business expert available to discuss HP’s potential CEO shake-up

With news media reporting that Hewlett-Packard’s board is considering ousting its CEO, Rice University business expert Anthea Zhang is available to comment on how this might impact the computer maker’s future.

‘There is already a possibility that a board of directors may choose a wrong CEO,’ Zhang said. ‘My research has shown that the possibility of choosing a wrong CEO is much higher when the predecessor CEO was forced out and/or the new CEO was hired from outside of the firm.”

In these situations, the board typically doesn’t have sufficient information (or sufficient time to search for such information) to evaluate the fit between the new CEO and the firm, Zhang said.

‘The hiring of Leo Apotheker as HP’s CEO is a typical example of such high-risk CEO successions,’ Zhang said. ‘HP’s board needs to avoid a vicious cycle of CEO successions.’

Zhang is is a professor of strategic management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Her areas of specialization include CEO succession and dismissal and foreign direct investment and technology entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Her research on these topics has been published in top-tier management journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal and Journal of International Business Studies. Zhang’s research has appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Week, The Economist, Investor’s Business Daily, CNBC and USA Today.

Zhang is an associate editor of the Academy of Management Journal and a consulting editor of Management and Organization Review. She also serves on the editorial review board of Strategic Management Journal and is the representative-at-large of the Corporate Strategy and Corporate Governance Interest Group of Strategic Management Society (SMS). She is the recipient of the 2010 SMS Emerging Scholar Award.

Zhang received a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from Nanjing University in China; a Master of Philosophy degree in international business from City University of Hong Kong; and a Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Southern California.

To schedule an interview with Zhang, contact David Ruth at druth@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.

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Anthea Zhang bio: http://business.rice.edu/OnlineDirectory/PersonnelDetail.aspx?id=3411