Managerial Aspirations and Suspect Leaders: The Effect of Relative Performance and Leader Succession on Organizational Misconduct

Explanations of organizational misconduct frequently point to declining firm performance and/or the actions of unethical or suspect leaders. Evidence that high-performing firms act illegally or unethically is an enigma. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues by exploring organizational performance using aspirational rather than absolute measures (i.e., social and self-referenced performance vs ROE or ROI) and examining the effect that suspect leader succession has on the increased probability of organizational misconduct. Our analysis of 128 collegiate football programs competing between 1953 and 2016 reveals an increased likelihood of misconduct among organizations with strong as well as weak performance, most notably in comparison to competitive peer programs. Social- and self-referenced aspirations produced distinct relationships between relative performance and misconduct. The impact of leader succession was conditional. The data revealed an increased likelihood of infraction episodes with the appointment of suspect leaders. In some instances, however, a reduced likelihood of misconduct accompanied succession events involving untainted leaders.