De-Fusing Organizational Power Using Anonymity and Cognitive Factions in a Participative Strategic Planning Setting

When an organization is facing disruptive change or the need for new capabilities to fit new conditions, the creation of a democratic strategic plan can be useful. However, strategic plans typically only reflect the beliefs and values of their architects; not all stakeholders. To include the beliefs of all stakeholders requires a participative environment. Due to the potential deleterious effects that organizational power may have in a participative setting, anonymity and cognitive factions is proposed to reduce the possible negative effects associated with power in a participative strategic planning setting. Group support systems have been shown to protect relationships and retain the social order in these settings. In this specific case, through the use of a group support system that supports anonymity and cognitive faction identification, we found that the sources of power typically found and used to drive group decisions in an academic setting did not drive the content of the strategic plan.     

Cognitive Mapping: A Process to Support Strategic Planning in an Academic Department

Cognitive mapping has been used to support strategic planning in business. However, the process has seldom been utilized to support strategic planning in nonprofit public organizations, where many reporting lines are less clear. This paper describes how the cognitive mapping process was designed and implemented to help a large academic department identify and merge the individual goals of faculty members as a first step in creating a strategic plan. Each map was created using the Decision Explorer^TM software during individual interviews, as opposed to using paper and pencil. An action case approach was used to plan and evaluate individual mapping sessions. Eliciting individual cognitive maps led to greater engagement by faculty in the strategic planning process. Nearly all of the participating faculty members believed that the cognitive mapping process was helpful and insightful and the resulting map was accurate and complete.     

Does Collectivism Affect Environmental Ethics? A Multi-level Study of Top Management Teams from Chemical Firms in China

This study tests the effects of top management team (TMT) member collectivistic values and TMT dissatisfaction with the financial situation on the environmental ethics of TMT members. We also examine the moderating effect of collectivistic values on the relationship between financial dissatisfaction and environmental ethics. Analyses of multi-level and source data show that financial dissatisfaction of the TMT negatively affects TMT members’ environmental ethics. However, TMT members’ individual collectivism can increase TMT members’ environmental ethics. Analyses also show that TMT members’ collectivism moderates the relationship between financial dissatisfaction and environmental ethics across individual and team levels.     

信任与战略决策绩效:对中国家族企业高层管理团队的一个实证研究

大量文献讨论了我国私营企业中的“信任”问题;许多轶闻式的证据也表明,私营企业高层管理团队成员的彼此信任程度极大地影响了其绩效和成长。本文试图从高层管理团队的角度,探讨信任与企业战略决策绩效的关系,并揭示高层管理团队内信任的影响因素。通过实证研究发现,我国私营企业高层管理团队内的信任度与团队成员间的社会交往程度有非常密切的联系,同时,信任度直接影响了高管层的战略决策绩效。     

The Impact of Top Mana(g)ement Team Process on Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Performance

This article aims to explore how top management team (TMT) process affects strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR), and in turn, how strategic CSR influences firm performance. In addition, this article examines whether CSR mediates the relationship between TMT process and firm performance. The sample consists of 203 hotels from the tourism and hospitality industry in the southeast China. TMT processes assessed are communication and cohesion. Results indicate that (1) corporate social responsibility is positively related to firm performance, (2) top management team process (communication and cohesion) is positively related to corporate social responsibility, and (3) corporate social responsibility fully mediates the relationship between top management team process and firm performance. Results highlight upper echelons mechanisms that underpin the TMT process–firm performance relationship. This study contributes to understanding how TMT process affects firm performance both directly and indirectly, through strategic CSR.     

Cognitive Maps and a Hyperknowledge Support System in Strategic Management

Strategic management is defined as the system of action programs which form sustainable competitive advantages for a corporation, its divisions, and its business units in a strategic planning period.We have developed a system called Woodstrat to serve as a support system for these action program activities on both the corporate, the divisional, and the business unit levels. The system is modular and is built around the logic of strategic management, i.e., the main modules cover the market position; the competitive position; the production position; and the profitability, investment, and financing positions. The innovation in Woodstrat is that these modules are linked together, i.e., when a strong market position is built into some market segment, it will have an immediate impact on profitability through links running from the assumptions on an expected development to the projected profit/loss statement. There are similar links making the competitive position interact with the market position, and the production position interact with both the market and the competitive positions, and with the profitability and financing positions.The intermodular links are based on expert knowledge of strategic management; expert knowledge is also worked into the modules such that the logic of strategic management guides the user through the process of working out sustainable competitive advantages. The process is made user-supportive with a hyperknowledge user interface. The support is made intuitive and effective with the use of object-oriented expert system technology. The basis for this is rather unusual: the Woodstrat system was built with Visual Basic, in which the objects to create a hyperknowledge environment were built.It is shown that the conceptual constructs which form strategic management can be described with cognitive maps, and that these can be adequately represented with our hyperknowledge objects. It is also shown that the knowledge formation which takes place in a management team when strategic plans are formed can be described and validated with a hyperknowledge support system. It is finally shown that a support system with hyperknowledge features, which are close to the cognitive maps of a management team, will have a profound impact on the depth and the structure of its strategic management processes.     

Individual Priming in Virtual Team Decision-Making

Virtual teams have different interactions than face-to-face teams because they rely on information and communication technologies, which can impede or assist certain human cognitive processes. Past research has shown that although virtual teams exchange more information than face-to-face teams, poor decisions often result, because team members do not consider the unique information they receive from others. Drawing from cognitive psychology, our research explored a unique way to improve team decision-making through the use of cognitive priming. We proposed that priming group members to pay attention to others or to engage in counterfactual thinking would improve team members’ cognition and, therefore, team performance. Prior research with individuals and brainstorming teams has shown these forms of priming to improve performance; however, no research has attempted to use priming to improve the outcomes of virtual team decision-making, which requires deeper interaction and cognitive involvement than brainstorming. We performed two lab experiments using primes that have been found to improve the individual decision-making process. We found that priming had some impact, but it did not significantly improve decision quality. Various reasons are discussed to explain why priming techniques may not be as powerful in teams as in individuals, and future research ideas are suggested to build on our initial work on priming in virtual team decision-making.     

The role of top management team attention in new product introductions

Individuals in high technology organizations inhabit four different “thought worlds” that shape their perceptions of the problems and opportunities facing the organization. Field people, planning people, technical people, and manufacturing people all have different patterns of allocating their attention and prioritizing issues. We theorize that some executives on the top management team (TMT) reflect the cognitive patterns of the areas that they represent; thus the representation of these thought worlds on the TMT ultimately affects how and when new products are introduced. This perspective integrates the concept of organizational thought worlds with the attention-based view, and we find that field people increase the introduction of products to existing markets while planning people increase products introduced to new markets. Manufacturing and technical people decrease products introduced to new markets. These findings increase our understanding of how the composition of the TMT affects the organizational-wide process of new product development.     

The Impact of Family Involvement on SMEs’ Performance: Theory and Evidence

By complementing agency theory with behavioral assumptions, we explore the effects of family involvement on small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) performance. We identify three separate dimensions of family involvement and hypothesize nonlinear, direct, and interaction effects on the performance of an SME. The evidence on 787 SMEs suggests that an inverted U‐shaped relationship exists between family ownership and performance, and ownership dispersion among family members negatively affects performance. Balancing family and nonfamily members in the top management team (TMT) is found to be beneficial to SMEs’ performance, but the family ratio in the TMT becomes crucial only at high levels of family ownership.     

Understanding the dynamics of new venture top management teams: cohesion,conflict, and new venture performance

Research conducted under the upper echelon perspective has produced consistent evidence of a relationship between top management team (TMT) interaction and firm performance. We draw upon and extend this research in an effort to explain new venture performance as a function of cohesion and conflict within the top management team. Based upon data collected from a sample of 70 new ventures, we find that TMT cohesion is negatively related to affective conflict and positively related to cognitive conflict. As expected then, we also find that TMT cohesion is positively related to new venture growth.     

Early teams: The impact of team demography on VC financing and going public

This study investigates how top management team (TMT) demographic characteristics affect firm outcomes for young high technology firms in Silicon Valley. We study how team composition and turnover shape an entrepreneurial firm's ability to attract venture capital and its ability to successfully complete an initial public offering. We find that broad access to information by virtue of having top management team members that have worked for many different employers (diverse prior company affiliations) and have diverse prior experiences (functional diversity) tend to be associated with positive outcomes. In addition, entrants to and founder exits from the TMT increase the likelihood that a firm achieves an IPO. TMT exits, in turn, reduce the likelihood of achieving an IPO. Results also suggest that prior human capital experience is consistently associated with positive firm outcomes. These findings suggest that team experiences, composition and turnover are all important for bringing new insights to the firm and are associated with the likelihood that an entrepreneurial firm will succeed.     

Upper echelons and portfolio strategies of venture capital firms

In this study we analyze how the composition of the top management team (TMT) influences the portfolio strategy choice in venture capital (VC) organizations. We develop a model of risk perception to investigate how education and experience of TMT members impact whether VC organizations invest with a focus on early stage ventures or not, specialize or diversify across industries, and invest with a broad or narrow geographic scope.Evaluation of data on TMTs and portfolio strategies of 136 European VC firms revealed that VC firms with higher proportions of TMT members with science/engineering education and entrepreneurial experience more likely invest with an early stage focus. Furthermore, TMTs with more management education diversify their portfolios more across industries. Finally, the more international experience TMT members of VC organizations have, the broader the geographic scope of investees. We discuss the implications of our findings for the VC literature.     

Strategic decision making in start-ups: the effect of top management team organization and processes on speed and comprehensiveness

Technology-based start-ups operate in high-velocity environments that make considerable demands on the comprehensiveness and speed of strategic choices. This study argues that characteristics of top management team (TMT) organization as well as TMT processes, namely, debate and trust, significantly influence the comprehensiveness and speed of strategic decision making in start-ups. Hypotheses are theoretically developed and tested with data from an empirical investigation of German start-ups.     

Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability

Strategic leadership and corporate sustainability have recently come together in conspicuously explicit fashion through the emergence of top management team (TMT) positions with dedicated corporate sustainability responsibilities. These TMT positions, commonly referred to as “Chief Sustainability Officers,” have found their way into the upper echelons of many of the world’s largest corporations alongside more traditional TMT positions including the CEO and CFO. We explore this phenomenon and consider the following two questions: Why are corporate sustainability positions being installed to the TMT? What effects do corporate sustainability TMT positions have at their organizations? We consider these questions through strategic leadership and neoinstitutional theoretical frameworks. Through the latter, we also engage with Weberian considerations of bureaucracy. We find that the reasons why corporate sustainability TMT positions are installed can be in response to a crisis at the corporation for which its legitimacy is challenged. We also find the corporate sustainability TMT position can be installed proactively in an effort to realize external opportunities that may have otherwise gone unrealized without concerted attention and coordination afforded by a strategic level position. Regarding effects, we determine the position can relate to the establishment of bureaucratic structures dedicated to corporate sustainability within the corporation through which formalized processes and key performance indicators to drive corporate sustainability performances are established. In the face of our finding that many corporate sustainability TMT positions are being removed despite having only relatively recently been introduced to their respective TMTs, we find that the successful implementation of bureaucratic machinery can help considerations to sustainability extend beyond the tenure of a corporate sustainability position within the TMT.     

New product portfolio performance in family firms

This study investigates the relationship between top management team (TMT) innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance in small and medium-sized family firms by exploring two family firm-specific sources of TMT diversity as moderators: the number of generations involved in the TMT and the ratio of family members in the TMT. Results indicate that family-induced diversity in the TMT has opposing moderating effects. Although a positive relationship exists between TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance when multiple generations are involved in the TMT, TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance experience a negative relationship when the ratio of family members in the TMT is high. The study discusses theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and develops avenues for future research.     

Common Ground, Complex Problems and Decision Making

Organisations increasingly have to deal with complex problems. They often use multidisciplinary teams to cope with such problems where different team members have different perspectives on the problem, different individual knowledge and skills, and different approaches on how to solve the problem. In order to solve those problems, team members have to share their existing knowledge and construct new knowledge. Theory suggests that negotiation of common ground can positively affect team decision making on the solution of complex problems, by facilitating knowledge sharing across perspectives. In a small scale study with student groups, external representations supported by a specific negotiation ontology were used to facilitate negotiation by encouraging participants to make their beliefs and values explicit. Results showed that the external representations supported clarifying contributions to group members and increased group participation in discussions.     

Behavioral Integration as a Relational Governance Mechanism in Family Firms—The Moderating Role of Family Involvement in Management

In this paper we introduce behavioral integration, a construct established in top management team (TMT) research, into the family firm field. TMT research argues that behavioral integration has a positive performance effect as it fosters commitment to the task at hand, joint goals, and mutual trust among TMT members. Because of these specific characteristics, we argue that behavioral integration might act as a relational governance mechanism that positively influences family firm performance. Based on research on family involvement in management, we posit that this positive performance effect of behavioral integration as a relational governance mechanism is particularly pronounced in family firms with a high degree of family involvement in management.     

团队成员视角下个体地位获得事件对同事行为的影响：基于事件系统理论和社会比较理论

文章旨在全面揭示个体地位获得事件对团队成员认知和行为的影响路径，以及在何种条件下个体地位获得事件将促进团队成员的积极行为表现，进而为管理策略的提出提供理论依据。通过对来自28个团队的293名员工进行问卷调查，并运用结构方程模型进行数据分析，结果表明：个体地位获得事件通过团队成员资源收益/威胁感知的中介作用分别对团队成员人际帮助行为和人际回避行为产生正向影响，团队合作氛围负向调节个体地位获得事件与资源威胁感知的关系，并对个体地位获得事件与团队成员人际帮助行为的关系具有显著的有调节中介作用。研究结果不仅进一步拓展了个体地位获得事件对员工行为的影响研究，而且揭示了个体地位获得事件对员工行为的影响机制和边界条件。     

The Relationship Between Top Management Team–Outside Board Conflict and Outside Board Service Involvement in High‐Tech Start‐Ups

Corporate governance research has extensively studied the relationship between outside board characteristics and outside board involvement. We add to this literature by investigating the extent to which interactions between outside board members and the top management team (TMT) affect the functioning of the outside board. Building on conflict theory, our study shows that conflict between TMT and outside board is an important antecedent for outside board service involvement. Specifically, drawing from a hand‐collected data set of 70 high‐tech start‐ups in Belgium, we find that TMT–outside board task conflict is both directly and indirectly, that is, through TMT–outside board relationship conflict, related to outside board service involvement.     

The Effects of Integrating Cognitive Feedback and Multi-attribute Utility-Based Multicriteria Decision-Making Methods in GDSS

Cognitive conflicts arise within groups because the members of a group view a problem from different perspectives, even when they have similar interests in achieving a goal. Disagreement within a group may occur due to: (a) differing judgment policies among the members, (b) inconsistency by any member in using a judgment policy, (c) group process losses that prevent group members from understanding each other better, or (d) limited processing capability which may prevent group members from processing all information effectively. Disagreement is especially likely when policies, processes, or information are conflicting in nature.A level 2 GDSS to aid judging in cognitive conflict tasks is presented that combines cognitive feedback and Multi-attribute utility (MAU) theory based multicriteria decision-making techniques with the communication structure and activity-structuring capabilities of a level 1 GDSS. Though cognitive feedback and MAU methods have been used separately to help groups resolve cognitive conflicts, never before have the two decision aids been used together in a computer-based collaborative system.The contributory effects of the components of this GDSS design were empirically tested in a laboratory setting. Three treatments: an unaided face-to-face meeting, a level 1 GDSS supported meeting, and a level 2 GDSS supported meeting were compared in a repeated measures experimental design.Results largely supported the proposed research hypotheses. Some specific findings include: (1) the level 2 GDSS reduced disagreement between group members and improved consistency of judgments better than the other meeting environments did; (2) there was no significant difference in the reduction of disagreement between the level 1 GDSS and face-to-face meetings; and (3) while there was no difference in improvement of consistency of individual judgments between the face-to-face and level 1 GDSS supported meetings, group judgments made in face-to-face meetings were more consistent.