CEO Age and the Persistence of Internal Control Deficiencies

Upper Echelon theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984) allows researchers to investigate executives’ decision-making process through their personal traits. This paper investigates the impact of CEO age on the long-term internal control quality. We examine the association between CEO age and the persistence of internal control deficiency. Using the number of material weaknesses in the future (one to five years) as the proxy of persistence of internal control deficiency, we find that companies with older CEOs tend to have less material weaknesses in the future. Furthermore, we also examine the impact of other CEO characteristics and CEO turnover on the persistence of internal control deficiencies. These results indicate that management, especially CEO’s personal traits have significant impact on a company’s policies regarding to internal control.