Does a public leader’s career experience matter for tackling public crises? Building on the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) framework, we adopt a refined temporal view of career experiences to delve into specific facets of past and current career experiences, which may be related to public leaders’ crisis management performance. Specifically, we theorize how two unique aspects of public leaders’ past career experience (career advancement velocity and prior crisis experience) can foster public leaders’ ability for handling a crisis, thereby enhancing crisis management performance. We also propose that two aspects of public leaders’ current career experience (social approval and tenure) can hinder their motivation to respond to a crisis, thereby hurting crisis management performance. Finally, we highlight the contingent impacts of public leaders’ managerial discretion, which can grant opportunities to alter the effects of public leaders’ past and current career experiences. We tested these hypotheses using longitudinal datasets of U.S. state governors and Chinese prefecture mayors. Our findings provide valuable insights into how public leaders’ career experience can influence their crisis management performance within different institutional and cultural settings.
