Lose no time! We have lost too much already: Firm adversity and CEO temporal leadership

We examined contextual predictors of chief executive officers' (CEOs') temporal leadership. Drawing on threatrigidity theory, we explain why and how firm adversities lead to CEOs' temporal leadership. The results based on multi-wave, multi-source data from 100 firms in China showed that CEOs' fear of external threats mediated the positive relationship between firm adversities (i.e., poor firm performance and environmental dynamism) and CEOs' temporal leadership. In addition, we found that firm age strengthened the relationship between CEOs' fear of external threats and temporal leadership and the indirect relationship between firm adversity and CEOs' temporal leadership through fear of external threats. We explicate new directions for understanding how organizational and environmental factors shape CEOs' time-related rigid behavior.