The Background on Executive Background: An Integrative Review

Abstract

This study reviews several decades of research on the topic of executive background, defined here as the total of an executive's “experience, knowledge, and education.” We consider work from both management and nonmanagement sources and from both macro and micro sources within management. Our review of 216 published empirical articles is structured around a series of widely studied executive background characteristics and categories, including tenure, functional background, knowledge and education, outsider/insider status, other professional experiences, and experiences outside the workplace. This narrative review is underpinned and informed by an inductively derived framework comprised of five key dimensions that represent distinct ways in which specific experiences can be conceptualized: visibility, timing, frequency, discreteness, and agency. We conclude our narrative review with a quantitative, bibliometric analysis illustrating some of the key patterns within the most recent work in this domain. Finally, we use the insights arising from our review to provide a set of theoretical and methodological recommendations for future work in this area.