Studying nonroutine executive transitions, where the top executive exits in irregular circumstances, builds knowledge about: succession dynamics. attributions of leadership, and implicit leadership theory. Increasingly common, such transitions are a landmark of organizational life and test current assumptions about executive leadership. Planned retirements and rotations, election cycles, greener pastures -- such events traditionally define executive eras as routine passages in agency life. Routine transitions (where a planned succession unfolds) include familiar rituals that stabilize the leadership change. This paler examines the concept of nonroutine executive departure, offers a typology of these exits and their effects, and presents an agenda for research based on these theoretical traditions. The case for a shift in paradigm is advanced in the conclusion. Public and nonprofit sector research on nonroutine CEO transitions is mostly cases with messages for avoiding hazards. This paper urges that we go ...