Toward an Agentic Theory of Outsider Outliers: The Case of Carlos Ghosn

Outsiders must overcome the constraints of their social status to succeed. In contrast, outliers leverage social capital to achieve extraordinary levels of performance. It has been suggested that outsiders who successfully emerge as outliers exercise agency. We purposefully select the rare case of Carlos Ghosn—the former CEO of Nissan and Renault—to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between outsiders and outliers. Data collection involved 16 face-to-face interviews with Mr. Ghosn at his Beirut residence and another 11 with senior Nissan or Renault executives. Our findings highlight outsider identity and efficacy as key mechanisms in the development of agentic capabilities critical to outlier performance. We identify how intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness enabled Ghosn, an outsider, to emerge as an outlier. His agentic capabilities were underpinned by his motivations for self-distinction and autonomy—offering new insights into what drives outsiders to achieve breakthrough change and outliers to achieve extraordinary performance. The findings advance an agentic theory of outsider outliers and explicate the boundary conditions between the two.