clusion, Vigilant boards seem to favor CEO duality because it promotes a totality of command at the top of a corporation that safeguards the existence of strong leadership.The agency problem theory implies that firms do so to reduce the agency costs associated with the separation of ownership and control. The normal succession theory suggests that firms adopt a dual leadership structure as part of the normal process used to replace a retiring chair/CEO. The evidence in this study supports both theories. Specifically, firms most likely to use the dual leadership structure to control agency problems experience statistically significant improvements in performance over the three-year period following the leadership structure change. Further, the firms in this subsample that also replace one or both senior managers experience greater performance improvements than those firms that only change leadership structure. These findings are consistent with the agency problem theory. Firms that are most likely to use the leadership structure change as part of a normal succession process show no signs of performance improvement after the leadership structure change. This finding is consistent with the implications of the normal succession theory. Conceptualizing CEO duality as a double-edge sword, researchers have drawn two conclusions:1) Research on corporate governance may benefit when potentially contradictory theories on organizations and agency relations are considered simultaneously .2) It is especially important that researchers investigating corporate governance recognize that CEOs and boards do not always have different interests .Therefore, it is not possible to draw a positive conclusion in addressing this issue. There are apparently numerous factors involved, and so many conditions that apply, it seems that a firm would have to base their decision on the dynamic existing among executive management and the board members....
