Nike’s CEO abruptly announced his resignation on Thursday after a turbulent few years at the shoe and apparel company. John Donahoe came from the tech world and was brought on board in 2020. But under his leadership, Nike struggled to compete against new competitors and saw declining sales.

To get the situation back on track, the company is bringing back former manager Elliot Hill, who previously headed Nike’s marketing department.

Many companies have taken such steps, where an outside CEO struggled and was replaced by a trusted boss. Think of Disney and Bob Iger, Starbucks and Howard Schultz, Apple and Steve Jobs.

And while the return of a familiar face to the corner office can provide stability, it also carries risks.

The best thing about bringing a veteran back into a company in crisis is that it can happen very quickly, says Yo-Jud Cheng, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia.

For the company’s board, that means they can bypass a long, drawn-out search process and already know the person, she said. “They’ve been more or less vetted to some degree.”

And the returning manager already has relationships with the employees and already knows the industry.

“They can probably act quickly,” Cheng said.

This can bring much-needed stability to the company. And in the short term, it could boost the share price and even appease activist investors.

But in the long run?

“Companies cannot stand still. They must constantly innovate and grow,” says Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“The person who comes back to stabilize the company may not necessarily be the best person to continue to grow the company,” he said.

Because during the absence of this boss, the company, the industry and the economy could have changed.

For example, Elliott Hill has not been with Nike since 2020, said Chris Bingham, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina.

“Four years is, I don’t know how many generations in consumer goods. I mean, that’s a long time in this industry,” he said.

And the strategies that worked in the past may not work today, he said.

For this reason, says UVA’s Cheng, in some cases companies that bring back a former leader view him or her as an interim CEO, whether he or she explicitly says so or not.

“But behind this is also the board’s general, broad-based search for a successor for the long-term future,” she said.

The risk is that no successor is found or that the new old boss wants to stay in office for too long.