While management research traditionally views corporate owners as governance actors, their influence has also recently extended to driving complex strategic change within the firms they own. This raises the question of how owners implement such change across their firms. I address this in the context of private equity, using career history and work activity data from 1997 to 2024 for nearly 9 million employees across 12,775 firms receiving first-ever private equity investment. I find that following investment, portfolio firms increase hiring employees from their owner's prior portfolio firms, particularly into managerial, finance, and operations roles. This common-owner hiring is more prevalent under owners who prioritize complex strategic change relative to those focused on financial restructuring, and the roles that common-owner employees occupy reflect the strategy the owner emphasizes. Portfolio firms that receive those employees then shift their organizational activities in a way that aligns with the owner's particular focus. These findings reveal a relational mechanism through which owners shape firm strategy: as owners evolve from monitors, they implement complex organizational changes by deploying trusted talent across firm boundaries.
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