EXPRESS: CEO Curiosity and Strategic Change: The Differential Role of Curiosity Types and TMT Characteristics

Despite ample evidence that curiosity plays a significant role in information seeking, we know little about the influence of CEO curiosity on strategic decisions. Building on established psychology research, we distinguish between two central curiosity types: interest-type curiosity—the joyful pursuit of novel information, and deprivation-type curiosity—the urge to address and close information gaps. We hypothesize that CEO I-type curiosity is positively associated with strategic change, while CEO D-type curiosity is negatively related to it. Since CEO curiosity entails a social aspect, it influences how a CEO acquires information from TMT members. We therefore examine the moderating role of TMT size and change. Applying a novel text measure for CEO curiosity types to S&P 500 firms, we find that the CEO D-type curiosity relates negatively to strategic change, while CEO I-type curiosity does not relate to it significantly. Larger TMTs seem to alleviate CEO D-type curiosity’s negative effect, while TMT changes appear to strengthen CEO I-type curiosity’s positive impact. This study contributes to upper echelons research by providing first insights into CEO curiosity’s multifaceted dimensions and their differential effect on change.