Taming the black swan: CEO with military experience and organizational resilience

In this study, we explore how chief executive officers (CEOs) with military experience affect the pre-shock risk taking of firms and thus their organizational resilience to exogenous shocks. We find that the military experience of a CEO is negatively related to the risk taking of a firm before a shock. Furthermore, we find that these pre-shock features promote organizational resilience to shocks, as firms led by CEOs with military experience are more robust and less vulnerable to shocks and can recover from shocks rapidly. This effect is partially mediated by the pre-shock risk taking of firms. We test our hypotheses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic using a sample of 1,033 CEOs of Chinese listed firms from 2017 to 2020.