The interface of the top management team and the board: A dynamic managerial capabilities perspective

Although top management teams use their human capital, social capital, and cognition (i.e., dynamic managerial capabilities) to drive strategic change in their firms, faultlines within these teams may dampen the strategic change that they produce. While boards can enable but also restrict these change efforts, we know little about how precisely a board's monitoring and advice-giving condition the impact of the top management team's dynamic managerial capabilities on strategic change. We clarify how intense monitoring and advice-giving affect strategic change when faultlines between the top management team's and board's dynamic managerial capabilities are more or less salient. We explain that intense monitoring further stifles both the breadth and speed of strategic change that can be accomplished, and that this is more pronounced when the faultlines between the two bodies are strong. Furthermore, we outline that intensive advice-giving can be beneficial in improving the breadth of strategic change, but more so when these faultlines are weak and less so when they are strong. Notably we illuminate that the reverse happens in terms of speed of strategic change: intensive advice-giving can be detrimental engendering a further dampening of strategic change speed which is more pronounced when these faultlines are strong but less when they are weak.     

The organisational environment’s impact on the servitization of manufacturers

The transformation of product-centric businesses towards service provision is claimed to be a viable strategy for manufacturers across industries and sectors. However, previous research on servitization has not paid sufficient attention to explicitly investigating its suitability for manufacturers operating in different organizational environments. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to establish propositions on the contingency factors in the organizational environment that affect the servitization of manufacturers at the industry level. Drawing on the theory of organisational ecology, the propositions include the effects of population density, competing populations, resource dependency, institutional linkages, technology, and political forces. Our study suggests that the operating environment explains at least part of the difficulties in the servitization process, which have been identified in previous studies, but whose causes have remained without full explanation. The study adds to the current understanding of the contingencies of transformation toward service provision and contributes to the managerial decision-making processes related to servitization.     

A theoretical model of training and its transference: the pivotal role of top management team composition and characteristics

Training is considered an important tool for organizations as they attempt to gain competitive advantages. However, transferring and maintaining the acquired skills and knowledge to the workforce remain problematic. Managerial support is a factor influencing training and its transference. However, the role of top management teams (TMTs) in this process has largely been ignored. This paper posits that the degree to which an organization invests in training initiatives, as well as the percentage of training transference and maintenance, is a function of TMT composition, TMT characteristics, and the degree to which the TMT holds subordinate managers accountable. A model and propositions are advanced in this study.     

The role of CEO emotional stability and team heterogeneity in shaping the top management team affective tone and firm performance relationship

In this paper, we aim to bridge the micro-macro divide by addressing continued calls from strategic leadership and affect researchers to examine the black box to consider how CEO characteristics relate to top management team (TMT) affective experiences, and, in turn firm outcomes. We further consider the role of one key contextual factor in this relationship: TMT heterogeneity. We predict that CEO personality, specifically, emotional stability, is positively associated with TMT affective tone. Moreover, we posit that the relationship between TMT affective tone and firm performance depends on TMT task-related heterogeneity, such that positive affective tone benefits firm performance in heterogeneous TMTs, whereas negative affective tone benefits firm performance in homogeneous TMTs. Using a novel methodology that measures key psychological aspects of the CEO and TMT, we examined 50 TMTs from publicly-traded companies to test our predictions. Our findings offer theoretical contributions to the strategic leadership, affect and diversity literatures as well as managerial applications for CEO selection and management and managing diversity in upper echelons.     

Attracting talent through diversity at the top: The impact of TMT diversity and firms' efforts to promote diversity on employer attractiveness

At a time where firms encounter a “race for talent”, it is crucial for many MNCs to present themselves as attractive employers. Failing to position themselves in the international labor market can reduce firms' ability to acquire valuable international human capital, thereby generating disadvantageous organizational effects. Against this backdrop, drawing on signaling theory and employer branding literature, our paper aims to shed light on the association between nationality diversity in the executive suite and MNCs' employer attractiveness. Our lines of argument build on the notion that top management team composition can affect MNCs' efforts to promote diversity among their employees. This focus on diversity, in turn, can affect MNCs' employer attractiveness. Examining firms from various European countries, we find that top management team nationality diversity is positively associated with firms' employer attractiveness for foreign job seekers. We also show that a firm's efforts to promote diversity mediate the relationship between TMT nationality diversity and employer attractiveness. We therefore advance the academic debate on diversity as an employer branding tool and a means to enhance employer attractiveness. In practical terms, we also provide valuable insights for firms wishing to transform into (more) diverse entities.