Scholars have advocated the importance of a long-term orientation to the sustainable management of organizations, but few have examined its sources. We develop more fully the concept of long-term orientation, and from the perspective of upper echelons theory, argue and demonstrate that a CEO’s human capital and motivation, as signaled by graduation from a top-ranked university, relates positively to three aspects reflecting long-term orientation. These include strategy in the form of profit reinvestment, R&D expenditure, and honest reporting of earnings; greater exclusive personal commitments of CEO time and finances to the firm; and stewardship of stakeholders such as employees and the community. Our findings are derived from a study of the BoardEx database of 1459 CEOs of US corporations from 2003 to 2013, and are robust to endogeneity concerns and to more inclusive rosters of elite universities.
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