Managing C-suite conflict: The unique impact of internal and external governance interfaces on top management team reflexivity

The ability of Top Management Teams (TMTs) to reflect critically on their own actions represents an important element of effective TMT decision making and governance effectiveness. This paper therefore examines how the TMT-board interface internal to the organization, as well as the TMT interface with the external supervisory authority, shape TMT reflexivity. Drawing from governance and psychological theories, we posit that cognitive conflict at the TMT-board interface can escalate by increasing levels of affective TMT-board conflict, and hereby, harm TMT reflexivity if not managed well. This proposition was tested in a multisource team-level data set collected in the field among TMTs (N = 111 TMT members) and their supervisory boards (N = 152 board members) of 56 Dutch insurance companies. The findings demonstrate that the link between cognitive and affective TMT-board conflict is mitigated by board membership influx. Yet in cases where conflict escalation does occur, its subsequent impact on TMT reflexivity hinges on the degree to which an external supervisory authority monitored TMT actions. The results illustrate that TMT decision making processes can be effectively influenced by internal and external TMT-governance interfaces, yet at different conflict stages, and through different governance actions.     

Top Management Team Internationalization and Firm-level Internationalization: The Moderating Effects of Home-region Institutional Diversity and Firm Global Focus

The factors that determine firms' levels of internationalization remain a focal area of international business research. Within this research stream, studies building on the upper echelons theory have investigated the influence of the demographic characteristics of the top management team (TMT) on firms' international expansion. However, the literature to date has overlooked the TMT's overall degree of internationalization as a key driver of firm-level internationalization. In our paper, we argue that by having self-selected into careers abroad, foreign TMT members by definition have a higher cognitive tolerance of foreignness than domestic TMT members do. We theorize that foreign TMT members' higher cognitive tolerance for foreignness enhances the overall TMT's level of international attention and international trust, thereby facilitating strategic decisions that favor firm-level internationalization. Additionally, we propose two key contingencies that attenuate this relationship: the institutional diversity of the firm's home region and the firm's global focus. Analysis of Fortune Global 500 firms supports the hypothesized relationship between TMT internationalization and firm-level internationalization, as well as the two moderation effects.     

Top management team characteristics and digital innovation: Exploring digital knowledge and TMT interfaces

On their journey toward digital transformation, industrial firms need to embrace digital innovation. The top management team (TMT) is expected to set the course for digital innovation, which is a challenging endeavour given the novel and cross-functional nature of digital innovation. We draw on role theory to make sense of emerging role requirements for the TMT and combine this view with upper echelon theory to hypothesize on the specific TMT characteristics that are needed for digital innovation. We first theorize that firms could benefit from TMT digital knowledge. Second, we argue that the effective utilization of TMT digital knowledge can be fostered at internal TMT interfaces, such as between the chief executive officer (CEO), respectively a chief digital officer (CDO), and other top managers. Finally, we consider the TMT hierarchical structure as a contextual factor in the stimulation of TMT integration processes by integrative CEOs and CDOs. We employ panel data regressions to a longitudinal dataset of US industrial firms and find a positive relation between TMT digital knowledge and digital innovation, on average. We additionally find evidence for the integrative roles of CEOs and CDOs. However, our findings also indicate that the CDO's integrating role can be hampered by a strong hierarchical structure in the TMT.     

TMT functional complementarity and post-IPO performance: Evidence from the U.S. biotechnology industry

Drawing insights from the resource dependence and the upper echelons theories, this study examines how top management team (TMT) IPO reconfiguration – the managerial change between immediately before and after an initial public offering (IPO), affects firm performance in the post-IPO years. We investigate this through the lens of TMT functional complementarity - the degree of differing functional knowledge held by the firm's TMT in the pre-and post-IPO stage. We argue that TMT functional complementarity positively affects firm post-IPO performance. Further, this relationship is positively moderated by executive managerial discretion, measured by CEO duality and TMT insider board membership. We test our model using a sample of 250 US biotechnology firms that went public from 1991 to 2019, and the empirical results largely support our hypotheses. This study contributes to the literature of upper echelons, technology-based ventures, and IPO firms.     

Top management team characteristics and organizational creativity

Drawing on the upper-echelon perspective, we investigated the impact of top management team (TMT) characteristics on organizational creativity. An organizational creativity index was used as a dependent variable to examine creativity at the organizational level. The results of the statistical analysis generally supported our hypotheses. The size of the TMT had a significant and negative impact on organizational creativity. The average age of the TMT was also negatively associated with organizational creativity. However, functional diversity of the TMT had a significantly positive impact on organizational creativity. These findings have important conceptual and practical implications. This study increased our understanding of the relationship between TMT characteristics and organizational creativity by introducing TMT characteristics as antecedents of factors influencing organizational creativity. This study suggests fruitful avenues for further research of this important yet understudied topic and useful managerial tools for composition of an adequate board for enhancing organizational creativity.     

Top management team diversity and high performance: An integrative approach based on upper echelons and complexity theory

This paper analyses Top Management Team (TMT) composition diversity as an antecedent of firm performance in accordance with a recent paradigm based on Complexity Theory. Research into TMT diversity is commonly seen as a double-edged sword because inconclusive results have been achieved in prior studies. This controversy has reinforced the call to employ a more appropriate methodology by moving beyond the reliance on multiple regression analysis and towards the use of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The study provides various TMT diversity configurations that lead to high performance. The study therefore contributes towards the TMT diversity literature by utilising asymmetric testing to advance in the understanding of the diversity of TMT attributes as an antecedent of high firm outcome. The paradigm currently facing TMT internal complexity is doubly relevant for managers, to ascertain the best TMT diversity compositions to achieve the best strategic goal and thereby the highest firm outcome, and for new research avenues in the demographic literature, to obtain richer insights from TMT data, which might provide additional information on the complex relations established within these TMTs.     

家长式领导对高管团队有效性的影响机制研究:以团队凝聚力为中介变量

本文通过对108家中国企业的高管团队问卷调查所获得的数据的分析,探讨了CEO的家长式领导对高管团队有效性的影响机制,结果表明:仁慈领导和德行领导对团队有效性有显著的积极影响,威权领导对团队有效性有显著的消极影响;团队凝聚力起到了部分中介的作用,威权领导通过降低团队凝聚力对团队有效性产生负面影响.     

高层管理团队内部社会资本、团队冲突和决策效果的关系——研究综述与理论分析框架

反映在结构因素、关系因素和认知因素三个维度上的高管团队内部社会资本为决策信息的交换和共享提供了机会、意愿和能力,有利于团队内部形成建设性的冲突模式,促进决策效果的提高.本文以团队冲突为中介变量,建立了高管团队内部社会资本与决策效果的关系的理论框架,提出了研究命题,并对企业高管团队内部社会资本的培育提出建议.     

Harnessing Diversity and Collective Action in the Top Management Team

Diversity has become an important issue at all levels of the company from the boardroom to the back office. It is increasingly apparent that diversity is vital to productivity, with academic research indicating an important link between diverse top management team (TMT) composition and corporate performance. However, the nature of this link remains elusive, as there is little accessible research that can help top teams to evaluate how diversity impacts on their strategic capacity. This paper seeks to fill this gap by developing a conceptual framework, illustrated with case examples, to explain the relationships between TMT diversity and TMT collective action. As collective action is difficult to attain from top teams that are high in diversity, six practical processes are developed from this framework for establishing and exploiting top team strategic capacity. The paper concludes by outlining the theoretical implications of the framework.

It is the range of skills and attributes acquired through a diversity of experiences and backgrounds that combine to create a cohesive and effective board.¹

     

新创企业高管团队的团队过程与战略决策绩效 ——认知的调节作用

新创企业的成败很大程度上取决于战略决策绩效,具有决策权力的高管团队在创业情境下的认知和行为过程对战略决策绩效具有重要影响。本文结合创业研究和高管团队研究的现有成果,以122家新创企业为研究对象,从内部团队过程和外部团队过程两个维度考察高管团队的团队过程对战略决策绩效的影响,并从认知的视角分析新创企业高管团队认知需要和认知能力对团队过程与决策绩效关系的调节作用。研究结果表明,新创企业高管团队的内部团队过程和外部团队过程与决策的质量和满意度均有显著的正相关关系,且认知需要和认知能力对这种关系具有调节作用,在认知需要和认知能力较高的情况下,内、外部团队过程对决策质量和满意度的正向影响更强。     

高管团队职能异质性与企业绩效关系研究:基于管理者认知和团队冲突的中介分析

高管团队的职能特征如何反映到企业绩效中一直是管理领域研究的重点,但是其实证检验结果呈现出复杂化的特征,一致性的结论尚未达成。本文从高阶梯理论和信息处理理论出发,较为全面地探索高管团队职能异质性如何影响企业绩效。研究结果表明:(1)高管团队职能异质性对企业绩效水平有负向的影响;(2)高管团队职能异质性会显著促进管理者认知集中性和复杂性的提高;(3)管理者认知集中性和复杂性的提高会进一步促进绩效水平的提高;(4)管理者认知是高管团队职能异质性影响企业绩效水平的中介机制;(5)高管团队职能异质性的提高会显著促进团队冲突的提高;(6)团队冲突的增强会抑制企业绩效水平的提高;(7)团队冲突是职能异质性影响企业绩效水平的中介机制。     

并购后高管变更、合法性与并购绩效——基于制度理论的视角

并购后的高管变更对于企业的并购绩效具有重要的影响,但目前的研究结论没有取得一致性。本文基于制度理论的视角引入合法性的概念,通过123份并购样本实证分析了并购后高管变更、合法性以及并购绩效之间的关系。研究结果显示:并购后高管变更与并购的外部合法性和内部合法性之间均存在显著的负相关;而外部合法性和内部合法性对于并购绩效具有显著的积极作用。本研究结论对于我国企业的并购后高管变更决策以及如何提升并购绩效具有理论指导意义。     

Culminating events and time working together in top management teams: Insights from private equity

In some managerial contexts, performance is measured by the results of a rare event that is itself the culmination of a long and ongoing process of daily decision making. In the private equity (PE) industry, for example, a firm makes a limited number of investments throughout its life. However, selecting these few investments requires the firm to engage in a large number of decision-making activities to evaluate the much larger array of potential investments. This raises the interesting possibility that the performance of each culminating event is not a function of the number of previously completed tasks, as it has been conceived previously, but is in fact a function of the accumulation of daily decision making that may or may not culminate in actual buyouts. To understand performance drivers in this and similar contexts, we examine and test the performance effect of the time that members of a PE top management team (TMT) spend working together to evaluate potential investments, and untangle this effect from the number of investments the TMT has bought and sold previously. Our data reveal a U-shaped relationship between time working together (TWT) and buyout performance, and a moderation effect of TMT heterogeneity and TMT support staff size. These findings extend our knowledge of executive decision making in PE firms, and in all managerial contexts where rare decision events are the culmination of an extended process of daily decision making.     

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.     

"I am stuck in meetings": Understanding the relation of CEO time management with TMT size and gender diversity

Time is a scarce resource, especially at the apex of firms. CEOs’ time management became a hot topic in recent academic and practice-oriented literature, which stressed the fact that CEOs are usually stuck in meetings. In this paper, I advance the nascent literature on the CEOs’ time management by focusing on the time the CEOs spend in meetings and on their choice of scheduling group meetings instead of bilateral meetings. Doing so, I study the relation of the CEOs’ time management with their top management team’s (TMT’s) size and gender diversity. Empirical analyses over a sample of 170 CEOs revealed a positive and significant relation between the size of the TMT and the time the CEOs spend in meetings with the top executives belonging to the TMT, while no significant relation emerged between the TMT’s gender diversity and the CEOs’ time in meetings. Conversely, while the TMT’s size does not significantly relate to the amount of time the CEOs spend in group meetings, a U-shaped relation emerged with the TMT’s gender diversity: the time spent in group meetings is higher when the TMT is homogeneous in gender, while CEOs prefer bilateral meetings when the TMT is heterogeneous.     

The forms and use of intuition in top management teams

Nascent research suggests that benefits of intuition use accrue not only to individuals but also to teams. These benefits may be especially important for top management teams (TMTs), who formulate strategic decisions for their firms. However, work on intuition use in strategic decision making (SDM) remains focused on the intuitions of chief executive officers (CEOs). Furthermore, the emerging literature on team intuition is very fragmented, leaving an unclear picture of how teams may develop and use intuition in their decision-making activities. To address these problems, we integrate team intuition and TMT research to propose four forms of TMT intuition, which differ based on the locus and integration of intuition. We describe the forms of TMT intuition, clarify the mechanisms that shape them, and discuss their relevance for TMTs' decision-making activities. Overall, we advocate for strategy research that focuses on the notion of “team” in team intuition.     

Top Management Team Members’ Decision Influence and Cooperative Behaviour: An Empirical Study in the Information Technology Industry

Organizational leadership is generally distributed between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the top management team (TMT) members. Building on this observation, we present an empirical investigation of the cues for CEOs to delegate decision‐making influence to particular TMT members. In the literature, explanations both based on expertise and driven by similarity are described. In this study, we reconcile both explanations by examining the moderating role of the TMT's level of ‘cooperative behaviour’ (collaboration and information exchange). We analyse when and in what circumstances TMT members’ expertise and similarity to the CEO regarding his/her functional background and/or locus‐of‐control predict their decision‐making influence. We postulate that TMT cooperative behaviour will advance the effect of expertise on TMT members’ decision influence but impede the effect of similarity to the CEO. Our hypotheses are tested on a data set of 135 TMT members from 32 Dutch and Belgian information technology firms. Overall, we find that our proposed research model is confirmed for technology‐oriented decisions. Furthermore, we draw exploratory conclusions about the effect of TMT cooperative behaviour on the systematic distribution of decision influence in TMTs.     

CEO–TMT exchange,TMT personality composition,and decision quality: The mediating role of TMT psychological empowerment

This research draws on the upper-echelons perspective to examine the effects of CEO–top management team (TMT) exchange quality and TMT personality composition on decision quality through the mediation of TMT psychological empowerment. Using survey data from more than 700 executives in 210 firms in a Middle Eastern country and adopting a split-data approach, we find that CEO–TMT exchange quality can advance TMT psychological empowerment. We also find that TMT neuroticism has a negative effect on TMT psychological empowerment, while TMT conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness have positive effects. Moreover, TMT psychological empowerment plays a mediating role in linking CEO–TMT exchange quality and TMT personality composition with decision quality. Our research contributes to the upper-echelons, leader–member exchange (LMX), and decision-making literature by drawing attention to the social dynamics between CEO and TMT members, as well as the psychological characteristics and psychological states of TMT members, and their implications for strategic decisions.     

TMT异质性、战略变革与绩效改善的关系研究——基于绩效下滑的非多元化企业的数据实证

本文基于高阶梯队理论,针对以往TMT研究的关键问题,探讨绩效下滑的非多元化企业CEO继任后,TMT异质性、战略变革和绩效改善的关系。本文选取了沪深两市2005-2013年相关数据为研究变量,对2008-2010期间发生CEO变更的145家绩效下滑的非多元化企业进行实证研究,结果表明,TMT任期异质性对战略变动有显著负向影响,战略变动对企业绩效变化没有显著影响,战略背离对企业绩效变化有显著负向影响。当我们探索性的测量战略变革的方向时,发现战略变动与企业绩效变化呈U型关系,战略背离与企业绩效变化呈倒U型关系。本研究不仅为绩效下滑的非多元化企业转型战略研究提供一个新的视角,而且为绩效下滑企业选择高管团队提供了决策的依据。     

Promoting business model innovation through social media strategic capability: A moderated mediation model

The rapid development of social media has significantly affected organizational innovation activities. However, scant research has investigated how social media, as an important innovative tool within the corporate landscape, influences firm business model innovation (BMI). This paper provides an initial investigation into whether, and how, social media can be used to promote firm BMI. Drawing on the strategic capability literature, the study examines the relationship between social media strategic capability (SMSC) and BMI by focusing on the mediating role of strategic flexibility and the moderating effects of top management team (TMT) heterogeneity and environmental dynamism. Empirical results from a sample of 283 Chinese firms with two key informants each show a significant and positive association between SMSC and BMI, which is mediated by strategic flexibility. In addition, moderated path analyses indicate that TMT heterogeneity positively moderates the SMSC–strategic flexibility path, while environmental dynamism positively moderates the strategic flexibility–BMI path in the mediated relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of this study for both social media and BMI research are discussed.