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There has been an increasing trend toward the creation of senior management teams (SMTs) which are characterized by a high degree of functional heterogeneity. Although such teams may create better linkages to information, along with the benefits of functional heterogeneity comes the potential for conflicts that stem from the value differences among subcultures in an organization. These conflicts can adversely affect performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how school leaders’ activities mediate the relationship of SMT functional heterogeneity to SMT effectiveness (in-role performance and innovation).

Data, which were obtained through a survey, was collected from a sample of 92 schools in Israel. Data were collected from two sources (principals and SMT members) to minimize problems associated with same source and common method bias. Data were aggregated at the team level of analysis.

The results of structural equation model indicated that principal’s internal activities enhanced SMT in-role performance whereas principals’ external activities enhanced SMT innovation. The results also showed that principal’s internal activities are full mediators of the relationship between functional heterogeneity and SMT in-role performance.

This study has implications for policies involving the design and implementation of leadership tools to effectively manage SMTs. The results of this study can help principals to establish priorities and allocate their time and resources more effectively, both inward and outward the SMT boundary so as to assist functionally heterogeneous SMTs translating the benefits of functional heterogeneity into significant achievements.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the implications of board human capital heterogeneity for company innovation by focusing on the educational and the functional background of directors. Moreover, it examines the moderating effect of the CEO expertise-overlap within the innovation domain on the relationship between board human capital heterogeneity and firm innovation.

The hypotheses are tested through a set of ordinary least squares regressions on a unique dataset of 149 Italian high-tech companies observed between 2012 and 2015.

Findings show that the educational and the functional background heterogeneity of directors increase both the innovation input and output. However, results highlight that these relationships are negatively moderated by the CEO expertise-overlap within the innovation domain.

The paper emphasizes the importance of appointing directors with different and specific educational and functional backgrounds to foster the company innovation.

The paper fills a gap in the literature as it has devoted limited attention to the performance implications of board human capital heterogeneity in the high-tech industry where knowledge and skills are the primary sources of value. Moreover, the paper integrates the research on the CEO-board interface by shedding light on how the CEO expertise within the innovation domain affects the contribution of heterogeneous boards to company innovation.

Drawing on the related insights from the upper echelon perspective, modern cognitive theory and path dependence theory, this paper aims to first integrate top management teams (TMTs) overseas experiences, research and development (R&D) strategic decision-making and innovation performance into a uniform theoretical framework and try to understand TMTs’ overseas experiences accounting for both the direct and indirect mechanisms of the variables involved within the transition economy of China.

The paper adopts research sample from the listed companies on the Growth Enterprises Market Board (GEMB) of Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China due to their stronger innovation consciousness. The research data are mainly from the WIND database of China, as the data issued in this database must be checked and approved by China’s legal institutions including China Securities Regulatory Commission and its authorized agencies. The samples cover different types of ownership and the vast majority of industries of China, which makes the objects a wide range of coverage and representativeness. In addition, according to suggestions of Podsakoff et al. (2003), the authors design the controlling measures from two aspects of data collection and statistical analysis to reduce the homologous error as much as possible.

Empirical results show that innovation performance is positively affected by the centrality overseas functional experience and industrial experience but negatively affected by the heterogeneity of overseas functional experience of TMT. Meanwhile, R&D intensity and modes play partially mediating effect in the relationship between TMTs’ overseas functional experience centrality and industrial experience heterogeneity and innovation performance, but for the relationship between overseas functional experience heterogeneity and innovation performance, R&D intensity leads to fully mediating effect.

This study contributes toward filling the gaps by elucidating the effect of TMTs’ overseas experiences on the innovation performance, identifying the mediating role of R&D strategic decision-makings in this relationship and empirically examining the acting mechanisms and paths of the variables involved in the Chinese context. In addition, practitioners could use these findings to improve their selection and training processes regarding both the top management members and the designing of the R&D strategies.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the experience of the top management team (TMT), such as industrial experience and functional experience heterogeneity, affect corporate social performance (CSP) and whether TMT faultlines act as a moderator.

To examine the effect of TMT experience on CSP, this study uses upper echelons theory as theoretical background, and data are selected from 212 Chinese high-polluting companies with A-shares from 2012 to 2016. The dependent variable is lagged by one year from 2013 to 2017.

Industrial experience both positively influenced CSR and negatively influenced corporate social irresponsibility. Functional experience heterogeneity had an inverted U-shaped effect on responsible behaviors and a U-shaped effect on irresponsible behaviors. Meanwhile, TMT faultlines played a moderating roles in the relationship between TMT experience and CSP, in which faultlines reinforces the non-linear relationship between functional experience heterogeneity and CSP.

The existence of impact paths between TMT experience and corporate social performances must still be examined. Other moderators need to be verified.

The important ways to promote more corporate responsible behavior and reduce irresponsible corporate behavior is to choose the right team members. During team formation, it is important to have experience in related industries and select team members with different functional experiences. Companies can consider hiring executives who tend to work together and have relevant experience, which can reduce the time cost of unnecessary conflicts.

This study combined the upper echelons theory with some attention perspectives to study the impacts of TMT experience on CSP.

Explores the origins of school‐staff team effectiveness by focusing on team characteristics, especially on team heterogeneity and team support. Based on educational and organizational theory, we derived propositions about how heterogeneity may affect team support and team effectiveness. More specifically, we hypothesized that task‐related attributes of heterogeneity (functional, educational, and team tenure) would relate positively to team support and team effectiveness, whereas relations‐related attributes would relate negatively to team support and team effectiveness. With a sample of 48 teams, identified as intact work teams, we found results partially confirming our propositions. Specifically, high heterogeneous teams in gender and functions were more supportive and effective than low heterogeneous teams in those attributes. By contrast, high heterogeneous teams in tenure were less supportive and effective than low heterogeneous teams in that attribute. The results are discussed in light of the specific context of schools, and several theoretical and managerial implications are drawn.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence of different aspects of top management team (TMT) functional background on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and oversea performance separately. This research aims to verify whether the social categorization theory and information and decision-making theory are applicable in listed companies of China’s information technology (IT) industry so as to provide key theoretical references for TMT enhancement ad corporate performance improvement.

This paper takes A-share listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as its study subjects, and it chooses the data from 2004 to 2010 in all of the 105 companies in IT industry in terms of the classification of Wind Database. The stepwise multiple regressions were run utilizing the regression program in Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS).

The research results show that the social categorization theory can better explain TMT’s influence on corporate performance. TMT functional heterogeneity does not contribute to improving corporate performance and shows significant negative influence on short-term performance and innovation performance in particular. Among the three basic functional backgrounds, TMTs dominated by “throughput” backgrounds show significant positive influence on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and overseas performance, and the influence turns out to be the largest among these three backgrounds. In terms of the three special professional experiences, top executives with overseas backgrounds have significant positive influence on all of short-term, long-term, innovation and overseas performances. Externally hired executives, however, would impede corporate innovation development, while those with government background would increase corporate overseas performance.

This paper analyzes the relationship between TMT functional background and corporate performance in a comprehensive way for the first time and then takes the lead in considering the dynamics and complexity of corporate performance as well as discussing the influence of TMT functional background on four corporate performances. This study not only supports the effect that the social categorization theory has on TMTs but also offers some inspirations on the development of China’s IT companies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the Boardroom heterogeneity affects IPO underpricing for entrepreneurial firms, where Boardroom heterogeneity was classified in terms of functional background, educational background, age and length of tenure.

A national research design was conducted using data collected from 355 firms listed on China’s Growth Enterprise Market from its start in 2009 to 2012.

The author found that IPO underpricing has a significant negative correlation with functional heterogeneity, a positive correlation with educational heterogeneity, a significant negative correlation with age heterogeneity, but it does not show significant correlation with heterogeneity in tenure. Board heterogeneity affects IPO underpricing of entrepreneurial firms partially, which means functional, educational and age heterogeneity conveys signals to potential investors regarding a firm’s quality.

More entrepreneurial firms in more years for data and long-term performance research design in future research would be required for further understanding of the relationships among the variables in this study.

This paper suggests that IPO firms may make use of such an influencing mechanism to determine the issue price or to control the IPO underpricing by showing the Boardroom heterogeneity.

This paper revealed the influence of the characteristics of board members of such firms on IPO underpricing, which is rare in recent studies comparing to the study for the top management team; also this study provides empirical support for such effect.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of top management teams on firms' value chain action intensity and value chain activity heterogeneity.

The study was conducted from an emerging market perspective. The sample was based on the secondary data collected from three fast-growing industries in India: automobile, pharmaceutical and fast-moving consumer goods over the three-year period from 2009 to 2012. The Panel Poisson and Tobit regression have been used to conduct this study.

Drawing upon the upper echelon theory, the author found that a top management team's educational level, functional heterogeneity and total organizational tenure influence value chain action intensity and value chain activity heterogeneity.

The author introduces the concept of value chain action intensity and value chain action heterogeneity and investigates the role of the upper echelon in influencing intensity and heterogeneity.

The purpose of this paper is to review the empirical literature on the relationship between the characteristics of the top management teams (TMTs) and the performance of entrepreneurial firms.

A literature review was carried out on 33 empirical studies related to TMTs and performance through analyzing and summarizing the quantitative studies conducted in this area.

The results of the literature review show that the relationship between TMTs (demographics and heterogeneity) and the performance of entrepreneurial firms is not straightforward and further investigation is still needed in this area.

The author maps the theoretical and empirical research of TMT demographics and heterogeneity in relation to firms’ performance and possible moderators and mediators, which govern the relationship between TMT composition and firms’ performance.

The author presents a detailed future research agenda for the purpose of advancing the theoretical and empirical knowledge on TMT-performance links. The review provides a comprehensive picture of TMT-firms’ performance literature and what should be done to enrich the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the upper echelon theory with signaling theory and examine the impact of top management team (TMT) on the initial public offering (IPO) performance of Chinese firms in the USA.

This study used Security Data Corporation (SDC) that is a central database for foreign IPOs in the USA. The authors identified 142 Chinese firms that issued stocks on the US markets between 2003 and 2014. This study used firm’s final prospectuses to collect data manually.

This study finds that the TMT characteristics such as functional heterogeneity and international exposure convey the positive signal of firm’s legitimacy to the US investors and increase the IPO performance.

This study extends the upper echelon perspective that has previously overlooked the signaling value of TMT characteristics in the foreign IPO studies. The top management plays an important role to the firm’s successful foreign market listing. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, a large number of Chinese firms have started IPOs in the USA, but there is a dearth of research on these firms. This study aims to contribute to the study of international business and management and describes that the TMT functional heterogeneity and international exposure have a significant role in the success of Chinese foreign IPOs.