Prior organisational performance and political change influence public sector chief executives’ length of tenure in public organisations. However, the influence of chief executives’ origins as organisational or public sector insiders, or alternatively outsiders in these terms, has not been examined. Our theory suggests that insiders are more adept at survival because of their experience working in public organisations. In the context of UK government executive agencies, we assess if chief executive ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ background to the individual agency, central government or broader public sector (as opposed to private firms or charities) influences tenure length. We use a newly created panel of all UK central government executive agencies and the turnover of their chief executives in the period 1989-2012. Our analysis uses Cox proportional hazard models with length of tenure as a dependent variable and independent variables of insider/outsider background, agency performance, political change, other aspects of chief executives’ backgrounds and differences in agencies’ functions and resources.
