Human Capital and Strategic Foresight: Evidence from Managers’ Stock Purchases

We explore how managers’ knowledge breadth gained through prior employment in multiple industries, firms, and functions shapes their foresight about the success of new products. In the context of managers’ purchases in their firms’ stock prior to new product introduction announcements, we find that managers with broad knowledge gained through experience across multiple firms and functions have superior foresight compared with those whose narrow knowledge was gained in fewer firms and functions. Yet when managers have broad knowledge gained across multiple industries, they underperform peers with narrower knowledge gained in fewer industries. Furthermore, these differences are more pronounced under higher financial market volatility. Overall, our study offers fresh contributions to the strategic foresight literature by foregrounding how the type of career experience shaping the human capital of managers affects their ability to evaluate their firms’ prospects. We also contribute to the strategic human capital literature by highlighting that instead of being a monolithic concept, knowledge breadth is more nuanced and is composed of different human capital dimensions that heterogeneously affect the capabilities and behavior of managers.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2024.0328.