Effectiveness of CEO Power Bundles and Discretion Context: Unpacking the ‘Fuzziness’ of the CEO Duality Puzzle

Decades of research on the effectiveness of CEO duality as a governance mechanism have produced inconsistent results, providing support and non-support for agency and stewardship theories. To better understand the duality puzzle, we first conceptualize CEO duality as a governance mechanism conferring structural power and board discretion upon a CEO. We then use the concept of complementarity and open-systems logic to evaluate the effectiveness of CEO duality in conjunction with other, concurrent sources of CEO power and discretion. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and data on 241 U.S. firms, we show that CEO duality combines in a variety of ways with other sources of CEO power into power bundles, and that particular power bundles configure with elements of the organizational and industry discretion context into four effective and four ineffective governance configurations. Consequently, our study suggests that the effectiveness of either a dual or separated leadership structure is reinforced or compensated for by other types of power and discretion arising from the context in which the CEO is embedded. Based on our findings we elaborate theory on plausible mechanisms underlying the complex patterns we observe and thus offer new insights for governance research.