CEO Advice Seeking: An Integrative Framework and Future Research Agenda

In this paper, we review the burgeoning but dispersed literature on chief executive officer (CEO) advice seeking, which has important effects on strategic decision making, the CEO’s and the board of directors’ effectiveness, and firms’ entrepreneurial orientation, innovativeness, and financial performance. We synthesize research findings about the key features of CEO advice seeking and its antecedents and outcomes across multiple levels of analysis. On the basis of our review, we identify important research gaps and develop a future research agenda that outlines new research questions and empirical foci that extend the current scope of analysis. We also highlight promising new theories and underutilized methods suitable for this area of research. With an integrative review and research agenda, we hope to stimulate cross-fertilization of different lines of inquiry and encourage new research that shines a spotlight on the remaining puzzles of CEO advice-seeking research.