Jost Sieweke

Management research has traditionally conceptualized strategic leaders’ risk preferences as enduring, static traits. However, insights from psychology and economics suggest that risk attitudes are dynamic and susceptible to environmental contexts. This study investigates the stability of strategic leaders’ risk preferences in response to exogenous shocks. Using a longitudinal dataset of German top managers from 2007 to 2017, we analyze how risk preferences shifted in response to the 2008–2009 global financial crisis. We find that the macroeconomic shock had a profound and immediate negative effect on strategic leaders’ risk preferences. Drawing on upper echelons theory to explore heterogeneity, we find that age significantly moderates this relationship, with the shock exerting a stronger effect on older leaders, whereas we find no difference between men and women top managers. Furthermore, we document that the effect of the shock is highly persistent: it took more than nine years for top managers’ risk preferences to return to pre-shock levels. These findings contribute to research on strategic leadership and managerial risk-taking by demonstrating that risk preferences are not immutable traits but are responsive to external crises, with long-lasting implications for firm decision-making.