Research on subsidiary CEOs traditionally focuses on the parent firms' demand for the establishment of overseas subsidiaries and the appointment of subsidiary CEOs, paying little attention to the perspective of subsidiary CEOs and their turnovers in response to environmental changes. Building upon the inter-organizational spillover literature, we develop a country-to-firm-to-individual negative spillover framework to investigate how nationalist movements against the parent country affect CEO turnovers in subsidiaries from the target country. We argue that the nationalist movement against the parent country will increase subsidiary CEOs' departure likelihood due to the animosity pressures spilled through their associations with the parent country. Expatriate CEOs are more likely to leave than local ones because they face more animosity pressures due to their stronger association with the parent country. Using the anti-Japan nationalist movement in China in 2012 as the research context, we found good support for our propositions. Furthermore, the likelihood of subsidiary CEOs' departure will increase when parent firms have higher visibility in the region but decrease when there are higher levels of local ownership in the subsidiaries. We contribute to expatriate staffing research by bringing the supply side under the spotlight. We also contribute to the spillover literature by identifying the mechanisms underlying negative spillovers from country to individual. Finally, our research advances the literature on nationalist movements by investigating the outcome of the nationalist movements against countries on related nationals.
