Executive self-compassion, strategic inertia, and corporate performance

Based on upper echelons theory, this paper analyzes the influencing mechanism between executives' self-compassion attributes (common humanity, self-kindliness, mindfulness,) and firm performance, and the mediator effect of firm strategic inertia. The empirical analysis of the sample data of 332 valid questionnaires from the architectural design industry in China shows that: (1) the common humanity and mindfulness of executives positively promote firm strategic inertia; (2) the self-kindliness dimension of executives inhibits firm strategy inertia; (3) strategic inertia hinders the development of firm performance in highly variable industries; (4) strategic inertia plays a partial mediating role between executive self-compassion attributes and firm performance.