Multi-cultural leadership teams and organizational identification in international joint ventures

Many international joint ventures (IJVs) fare poorly. An important factor is that members of an IJV top management team (TMT), which generally comprises people from different cultures, often find it difficult to work together. In this paper we argue that social identity theory and organizational identification processes can help us understand why this is so. We propose that factionalism in a TMT is a significant hazard posed by member identification with different parents. In addition, identification with both the IJV and a parent firm can lead to significant role conflict for IJV top managers. Factionalism and role conflict in turn can result in poor intra-TMT communications and inefficient decision making. Literature in social identity theory and organizational identification suggests that the relative status and power of parents as well as successes of IJVs can affect TMT members' identification with the IJV or the parent company. Preliminary field interviews provide general support for these propositions. Our analysis suggests that organizational identity and identification can be a valuable tool to facilitate the understanding of TMT functioning and IJV performance.     

Effective teamwork at the top: the evidence from China

Effective teamwork is an important topic of human resource management, and how top-level managers work effectively as a team is critical to business success. Prior research indicates that the diverse background of top managers influences the effectiveness of their teamwork, and the effects of top management team (TMT) diversity on organizational innovation varies. In this study, we propose that functional team dynamics plays a crucial role in facilitating TMT effectiveness. On the basis of a sample of Chinese firms, our findings support the distinction between demographic and network diversities and the moderating effect of functional team dynamics on TMT diversity–firm innovation relationships.     

高层管理团队（TMT）有效性的动态模型——人口特征研究与情景领导研究的结合

高层管理团队（Top management team．TMT）作为团队的一种特殊形式，因为其有效性对企业的生存发展起到至关重要的作用．所以近年来受到国内外学者的广泛关注。但是。在过去的文献研究中，我们不难发现，学者较多研究的是TMT在人口特征（年龄，教育背景等）的异质性同不同企业绩效指标之间的关系。但是不同学者的研究结果却往往相互矛盾。为了解释不同研究结果的差异，我们结合权变理论，提出了一个动态模型，来更好地分析TMT的有效性。     

Organizational Performance Consequences of Age Diversity: Inspecting the Role of Diversity‐Friendly HR Policies and Top Managers’ Negative Age Stereotypes

This paper seeks to advance the diversity literature by investigating organizational performance consequences of age diversity. Drawing from social‐identity and social‐categorization theory, we theoretically argue that, in age‐diverse companies, age‐based subgrouping processes occur, favouring a shared perception of a negative age‐discrimination climate. This perceived negative age‐discrimination climate in turn negatively relates to organizational performance. As the main contribution, top managers’ negative age‐related stereotypes and diversity‐friendly HR policies are introduced as organizational‐level moderators that increase and attenuate, respectively, the social categorization processes affecting performance in age‐diverse companies. We utilized structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses using a multisource dataset comprising 147 companies. The results supported all hypotheses, indicating that low negative top managers’ age stereotypes as well as high diversity‐friendly HR policies are potential organizational factors that can prevent the negative relation of age diversity with organizational performance transmitted through the negative age‐discrimination climate. These results are discussed in light of their contribution to the diversity literature and social‐categorization theory as well as their implication for practitioners.     

What a Diverse Top Management Team Means: Testing an Integrated Model

Prior research has produced inconsistent results on the relationship between top management team (TMT) diversity and firm performance. Drawing on the information–social categorization framework, this study is designed to investigate both the mechanism and the contextual factors underlying the relationship between TMT cognitive diversity and firm performance by examining them in a unified model so as to better understand how a diverse TMT works. Based on a multi‐sourced survey of top managers from 118 Chinese firms, this study finds that team interdependence and team cohesion moderate in the linkage between TMT cognitive diversity and elaboration of task‐related information. In addition, TMT's elaboration of task‐related information mediates the interactive effects of TMT cognitive diversity and team interdependence on firm performance as well as the interactive effects of TMT cognitive diversity and team cohesion on firm performance.     

Relationships Between Cultural Orientations,Shared Ethical Values,Job Characteristics,and Organizational Commitment for Turkish Industrial Sales and Retail Managers

This study examines the relationship between cultural orientations, shared corporate ethical values, job characteristics, and organizational commitment for Turkish industrial sales managers and retail managers, replicating and extending the study done by Hunt, Wood, and Chonko (1989). This comparative study found that organizational commitment is a positive function of both Turkish industrial sales and retail managers' personal attributes/characteristics, shared corporate ethical values within companies, and task identity, autonomy, variety, and feedback as main components of job characteristics. The perceived level of cultural orientations of managers, on the other hand, differs significantly between two groups: companies with bureaucatic orientations affect organizational of commitment of their employees negatively whereas innovative and supportive ones affect positively.     

TMT conflict,organizational structure,and entrepreneurial orientation: An attention-based view

Drawing on the attention-based view, this study investigates the linkage of top management team (TMT) conflict to entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the moderating effect of organizational structure in terms of formalization and centralization on the linkage. It finds that TMT cognitive conflict is positively related to EO, while affective conflict is negatively related to it. Furthermore, formalization positively moderates the linkage of TMT cognitive conflict to EO, while negatively moderates the negative linkage of TMT affective conflict to EO. Moreover, centralization does not significantly moderate the linkage of either TMT cognitive or affective conflict to EO. This study enriches our knowledge of the antecedents of EO, improves our understanding of the value of TMT conflict by distinguishing between TMT cognitive conflict and affective conflict, and introduces a novel insight—the attention-based view—to elaborate the TMT conflict-EO linkage.     

企业高管团队行为整合、冲突与绩效的作用机制初探

本文基于高管团队的“高阶梯队理论”以及高管团队的特质性研究,分析探讨了企业高管团队的特质、行为整合、团队冲突及其与绩效之间的作用机制。同时,提出了高管团队行为整合、冲突与绩效的作用机制概念模型,为进一步展开实证研究提供了理论基础,也对企业高管团队的管理、培训与激励起到了借鉴作用。     

高管团队异质性与企业战略变革

高层管理团队在企业战略管理中发挥着决定性作用,是企业战略变革的关键因素之一。高层管理团队异质性会对团队的内部沟通、凝聚力以及决策的效率和质量产生影响,最终对企业的战略变革产生影响。本文首先对国内外高管团队异质性的相关研究进行文献综述,在此基础上提出高层管理异质性对战略变革的影响取决于高管团队能否达成战略变革共识。战略变革共识的达成则要求高管团队整合和利用异质性带来的资源丰富性,并且正确处理团队冲突。     

Innovating Beyond the Horizon: CEO Career Horizon,Top Management Composition,and R&D Intensity

Decreasing research and development (R&D) can impair the ability of firms to remain innovative in the long run. CEOs have been accused of curtailing R&D investments as they approach expected retirement, yet received findings on R&D investment behaviors of late‐career CEOs are mixed. We argue that one reason for these inconsistent findings could be that traditional approaches overlook the fact that CEOs are not isolated agents in making R&D decisions. We build on the premise that CEOs interact with their top management team (TMT) when shaping R&D strategy and advance a contextualized view of CEO dispositions in their late career stages as being constrained or enabled by their TMT. We hypothesize that some TMT attributes (e.g., tenure and age) may amplify, whereas others (e.g., functional experience and education) may mitigate inclinations to reduce R&D. Our findings, based on a longitudinal sample of 100 US manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2008, provide nuanced insights into how different TMT characteristics influence CEO‐TMT dynamics, with TMT age and TMT tenure playing particularly pronounced roles. We discuss implications of our CEO‐TMT interface approach for theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Top Teams and Strategy in a UK University

This paper reports on the results of an in-depth study of how a top management team (TMT) puts strategy into practice in a UK university. A study of the top team in Warwick University was conducted to analyse how strategy was formulated and implemented. The results suggest that a combination of two broad theoretical lenses provides useful analytical insight. These are strategy as practice and strategy as process. The main elements of this university's strategy result from an interplay of localized routines and patterns of action within an organizational context, which both produces and is a product of such actions. The TMT itself was found to be clearly identifiable and stable in composition. The team exhibited identifiable patterns of strategic thinking and acting. However, the role of organizational structure was also found to be a key influence on the actions and processes of the TMT with strong central control tendencies in the team being counterbalanced by devolved operational control to individual departments. The data also reveal inter-relationships between organizational structures and the TMT in four key areas: direction-setting, monitoring and control, the alloca- tion of resources, and processes of interaction. The overall conclusion is that to understand how strategy is practised, analysis needs to focus on how patterns of action are associated with the characteristics of both the team and the wider organization. The nature and characteristics of these patterns can be related to how strategy is put into practice.     

The Influence of Top Management Team International Exposure on International Alliance Formation

abstract    This study examines the effect of top management team (TMT) international exposure on the formation of international alliances. We develop our arguments based on relational capital theory to suggest that top executives with international exposure are critical to firms' international alliance formation. Supporting this view, we find that TMT international exposure is positively associated with the formation of international alliances. Moreover, we find evidence to suggest that the effect of TMT international exposure on international alliance formation is more positive as the level of environmental uncertainty increases. We discuss implications and directions for future research.     

基于行动导向的高管团队运行机制研究

高管团队是企业的核心决策主体,关系到企业的可持续发展。高管团队运行机制的研究应该将人口统计特征与团队过程相结合,通过建立行动导向决策模型,指出团队认知是高管团队行动的基础;团队调适是高管团队决策的重要保障;高管团队成员经过决策参与、方案议定、决策执行及决策评估完成决策过程。     

建立高层管理团队的时机分析

在管理实践中,是不是任何时候都需要建立高层管理团队?本文旨在对建立高层管理团队时机进行分析。首先从高层管理者工作入手,在明茨伯格关于管理者角色研究的基础上,得出并不是任何时候都需要建立高层管理团队。最后提出应根据所面临问题的难易程度和不确定性水平高低,来确定不同的工作模式,并提出了在每种模式下管理者应发挥的作用。     

Leading corporate sustainability: The role of top management team composition for triple bottom line performance

Sustainable development at the corporate level requires balancing social, environmental, and financial performance goals. Achieving such “triple bottom line” (TBL) performance is a very challenging task. In this study, we explore the role the organization's top management team (TMT) plays in leading their organization towards corporate sustainability. We focus on how two distinct aspects of the TMT's structural composition—the presence of a “chief sustainability officer” (CSO) and the TMT's functional diversity—affect the organization's ability to reach high levels of TBL performance. We follow the presence of 22 global energy companies in Corporate Knight's “Global 100” sustainability index for a period of 11 years and find that, surprisingly, the presence of a CSO does not boost TBL performance. However, we do find a positive effect for TMT functional diversity, suggesting that more diverse TMTs are better able to lead their organization to higher levels of TBL performance.     

A temporal perspective on the relationship between top management team internationalization and firms' innovativeness

This study examines whether top management team (TMT) internationalization is positively related to firm innovativeness. Besides focusing on the accumulation of top managers' international knowledge and capabilities, we explore the influence of moderators reflecting temporal concerns at three levels: CEO age, TMT tenure, and firm age. Combining upper echelons theory with innovation literature and using a sample of large stock-listed German firms, we demonstrate that TMT internationalization can increase firm innovativeness. This relationship is context-dependent on the age of the CEO. Overall, this paper sheds light on the antecedents of firm innovativeness and the consequences of increasingly international TMTs.     

Career patterns of top management team members in five countries: an optimal matching analysis

This paper introduces optimal matching analysis (OMA) to the field of top management research. With this method, we develop six career patterns of top management team (TMT) members from five countries based on their international experience, organizational tenure and professional experience. The results provide strong support for the significance of these patterns, since each country (Denmark, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) shows one to four predominant career patterns of their managers and the occurrence of these patterns also differs significantly between the fields of activity within the TMT (chairperson, head of a division, primary activities and support activities).     

Socio‐Emotional Wealth Separation and Decision‐Making Quality in Family Firm TMTs: The Moderating Role of Psychological Safety

Socio‐emotional wealth (SEW), defined as the firm's non‐financial aspects meeting the family's affective needs, has become the dominant paradigm in family firm research. Recent debate acknowledges potential SEW heterogeneity within family firms. This study considers the effect of polarizing opinions on SEW preservation among TMT members as a source of separation in the TMT. More concretely, we study the effect of SEW separation on TMT decision‐making quality, while taking into consideration behavioural integration as a team process and psychological safety as a team context. Based on a unique multiple respondent sample of 300 managers from 55 Belgian private family firms, we find that behavioural integration mediates the negative effect of SEW separation on TMT decision‐making quality. In addition, we find that the negative effect of SEW separation on behavioural integration is mitigated by psychological safety and even turns into a positive effect at high levels of psychological safety.     

Structure and characteristics of top management teams as antecedents of outside executive appointments: a three-country study

We examine top management team (TMT) structure and characteristics as potential endogenous antecedents of outside appointments of non-CEO senior executives, an executive category that has not yet received significant research attention despite its importance for corporate outcomes. In doing so, we draw on human capital and similarity-attraction theories, thus combining two complementary managerial decision rationales. Additionally addressing the pressing need for cross-country TMT research, this study empirically analyzes a unique sample of 880 non-CEO TMT appointments at large non-financial corporations in France, Germany and the UK between 2006 and 2010. Overall, the results show that TMT endogenous factors such as structure, new executive characteristics and incumbent TMT characteristics may hold significant explanatory power for new executives' origin. Beyond the individual explanatory factors, the comparative nature of the study reveals three distinct country profiles of the degree by which the two theoretical rationales appear to influence appointment decisions.     

Work‐life support practices and customer satisfaction: The role of TMT composition and country culture

Despite the growing prevalence of work‐life support (WLS) practices in companies, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical clarity on their benefits to organizational performance. It is also unclear if the organizational performance effects of WLS practices vary based on an organization's internal and external environments. The dual objective of this paper is to investigate whether WLS practices relate to customer‐focused outcomes and, if so, under which conditions WLS practices yield benefits. Drawing on contingency theory, we examine how the boundary conditions of internal firm characteristics (e.g., percentage of top management team [TMT] members with children) and external environmental factors (e.g., gender egalitarianism of the country) moderate the relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. We shed light on these issues by examining multisource, longitudinal data collected over three years from a multinational corporation operating in 27 countries. The results show that both percentage of TMT members with children and gender egalitarianism of the country strengthen the relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. The findings provide insights into the circumstances when WLS practices provide performance benefits for firms and the translatability of these benefits from one country to another.