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This paper aims to develop a conceptual foundation of a fit between top management teams (TMTs) and their company’s corporate strategy. The authors fortify the importance of the concept of fit if the impact of upper echelons on organizational performance is trying to be explained. Yet, a constitutive concept of fit for the corporate strategy, a particularly important dimension of strategy, was previously neglected.

In a conceptual/theoretical approach, the authors selected demographic managerial characteristics from previous empirical studies from the research stream on upper echelons and combined them with other promising characteristics. To analyze them in respect to the requirements of low and highly diversified companies, the authors applied the concept of the dominant logic, an important theory in the field of corporate strategy.

The authors establish two distinct profiles of TMT members for low and high degrees of diversification and provide guidance on how to measure the TMT-corporate strategy fit – for individual TMT members and for the entire TMT – as a degree of fit on a ratio scale.

This work constitutes the first exhaustive concept of a TMT-corporate strategy fit. It provides a profound research foundation for scholars in the field of TMTs and the upper echelons theory as well as a promising and complementary perspective for practitioners when assessing their TMT composition.

The paper aims to empirically examine the questions of how top management team (TMT) characteristics, including TMT heterogeneity and vertical dyads differences between TMT and Board Director, influence entrepreneurial strategic orientation, as well as how industry environment and corporate ownership moderate those relationships.

The paper designs the panel data on the listed companies of China's Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Board for the period 2006-2010, and uses hierarchical regression analysis and grouping regression analysis when examining the relationships among variables involved.

The paper provides empirical insights about how top management team (TMT) characteristics, including TMT heterogeneity and vertical dyads differences between TMT and Board Director, influence entrepreneurial strategic orientation, as well as how industry environment and corporate ownership moderate those relationships. It suggests that, except for TMT educational background, the heterogeneity of TMT age, gender, functional experience, and the vertical dyad differences between TMT and board chairperson significantly and positively impact ESO. Furthermore, industry environment and corporate ownership will moderate the relationship between TMT characteristics and ESO.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how top management team characteristics influence entrepreneurial strategic orientation, as well as how industry environment and corporate ownership moderate those relationships.

The paper seeks to address four key Top Management Team (TMT) demographic characteristics in their relationship with firm performance: age, functional background, educational field, and team tenure. The study extends research on the TMT by explicitly introducing team performance as a new context measured in the form of International Risk Management Factor, in addition to demographic characteristic effects. International Risk Management Factor is developed based on multiple international risks trading off theory. In order to calculate that factor International Risk Management Index is introduced.

In the paper a sample of 212 firms was used, including 4,009 executives; also four hypotheses were tested. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis.

The findings in this paper support the proposition that top management team is an appropriate unit of study, due to its impact on firm performance. The results indicate that there is a significant correlation between TMT demographic characteristics and firm performance. This study concluded that three of the proposed four TMT demographic characteristics, including age, functional background, and team tenure influence firm performance. Results validate the proposition that TMT demographic characteristics show a significant positive correlation with firm performance, particularly when the accounting measure is applied. In addition, Top Management Team performance was positively correlated to team tenure, suggesting that as team tenure progresses team performance improves.

The paper differs in many features from previous research. Some of the most important aspects include scope of the study, scale of the sample, complexity of the moderated variable, uniqueness of moderated variable operationalization, and innovation in calculating International Risk Management Factor. For the first time, the study focuses exclusively on Top Management Team performance. The concept, which captures complexity of all TMT characteristics, is not included in demographic characteristics of TMT.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the demographic characteristics of top management teams (TMTs) (i.e. age, gender, administrative level, senior management experience and educational background) and megaproject performance, with respect to schedule, cost, quality, safety and technological innovation. The results shed new light on the effectiveness of different types of TMT.

This paper collected secondary and objective data from 208 TMT members in 42 megaprojects and employed hierarchical regression analysis to test the research hypotheses.

The findings revealed that age has a significant influence on schedule performance; gender has a significant influence on safety performance; senior management experience has a significant influence on cost performance; and educational background has a significant influence on both schedule and technological innovation performance. However, this study did not find evidence of a significant relationship between the administrative level and megaproject performance.

This paper mainly focused on China’s megaprojects, most of which are globally influential (e.g. Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and Shanghai Expo), however this sampling approach still limits the generalizability of research findings to other contexts.

The results of this paper contribute to a better understanding of how management team capabilities translate into better project achievements. This paper also provides implications on the criteria for selecting top megaproject managers to optimize the composition of the TMT and realize better performance.

The impact of the cognitive and demographic characteristics of top management teams (TMTs) on the strategic assets acquisition performance in organizations is evaluated. The evaluation measure is relative efficiency in converting generic inputs into valuable strategic assets using data envelopment analysis. Of the 12 TMT characteristics evaluated about three were statistically significant, and four were inconclusive. The study was performed on firms in the domestic airline industry.

The paper aims to investigate the effect of compositions of managerial/demographic characteristics of the top management team (TMT) on the extent of information technology (IT) adoption in small businesses (SMEs), where such strategic decisions made by TMT have direct and significant influence on all aspects of business operations and its competitive position in a market.

Based on the upper echelon theory, the study formulated four hypotheses relating the compositions of TMT characteristics to the extent of IT adoption in different functional areas. Multiple regression analysis was employed to analyze the data.

The age average and the education average of TMT in small businesses are significant predictors of the extent of IT adoption. However, the group heterogeneity (either gender or ethnicity), contrary to the prediction, has negative impact on the extent of IT adoption.

The research findings indicate that the age and education composition of managers as current/future top management is critical to facilitate the extent of IT adoption in SMEs.

The research contributes to the body of knowledge in IT adoption by complementing the results of prior research with the findings that the characteristic compositions of TMT affect the extent of IT adoption in SMEs, applying the upper echelon theory to examine issues surrounding IT adoption, and suggesting practical implications that SMEs could compose, educate, and rejuvenate their top management teams to achieve a high extent of IT adoption.

This study aims to identify the role of top management team (TMT) in the internalization process and vital characteristics for successful internationalization. The literature analysis presents the evolution of TMT concept, its relatedness to internalization conditioned by resource dependency theory and institutional theory and current studies on TMT characteristics linked to internationalization. Conducted research also let us to identify which abilities, skills, or knowledge TMTs are missing, aiming to achieve better international performance. The study contributes to current small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) internationalization studies by providing insights, a deeper analysis of such phenomena and future research directions. Consequently, the study provides directions for SMEs, seeking to improve their performance of international activities. The practical implications of the study’s results are related to the selection and recruitment of new TMT members or recommendations for training. The evaluation of candidate’s experience, personal qualities, and communication skills are important in hiring process of managers. It might require the improvement in selection process by including business case simulation, trial day, or references from previous employers. TMT members’ capabilities should be regularly evaluated by peers and if necessary specialized training should be provided on time.

This work has three main objectives – to analyse whether the strategic vision of the top management team (TMT) directly affects firms' innovation performance; to shed some light on which of the intrinsic characteristics of work teams proposed in the literature influence innovation; and to analyse the joint effect that the TMT's vision and the work team's characteristics may exert on innovation performance.

The sample for this study was chosen from the Dun & Bradstreet database. The population consists of firms with more than 50 employees belonging to the three sectors of the Spanish economy with the largest number of registered patents according to statistics from the Spanish Office of Patents and Brands (960 firms).

The results indicate that the TMT's strategic vision alone does not explain companies' innovation performance. Innovation also requires the existence of diverse, cohesive, and autonomous work teams whose members engage in fluent informal communication.

The empirical evidence demonstrates the complexity of the innovation performance that has to be encouraged by the TMT, but also supported by the existence of teams with specific characteristics.

These results offer relevant implications for R&D managers about the way teams should be formed to increase innovation. The paper derives some conclusions about the key characteristics of work teams that, in combination with the view of the TMT, can affect innovation in firms.

The majority of earlier studies have analysed theoretically the effect of both variables – the strategic vision of the TMT and the intrinsic characteristics of teams – on innovation, but separately. This paper analyses the joint effects that the intrinsic characteristics of work teams have on innovation, which resolve some contradictions regarding the way some variables affect innovation of the firm. Finally the results offer empirical evidence on how Spanish firms obtain innovation performances.

This paper aims to examine the influence that family firms’ top management team (TMT) behavior and characteristics exert on their innovation opportunity realization.

Data were collected through a survey addressed to a representative sample of Italian firms. The analyzed sample consists of 237 firms, 120 of which are family firms. A series of ordinary least squares models were used to test the four hypotheses.

Family firms realize fewer innovation opportunities than non-family firms. This result is fully mediated by the knowledge exchange in the TMT as follows: in family firms, the TMT exchanges less knowledge than in non-family firms, which drives their lower realization of innovation opportunities. In family firms TMT, the increase in the non-family members positively influences the TMT knowledge exchange, but only when the time the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) spends in searching for innovation opportunities outside the firm is low. The more the CEO search increases, the more this positive influence decreases, up to the point it becomes negative.

The study contributes to the literature on innovation, knowledge management and organizational design in family firms. Nevertheless, data were collected at a single point in time and in a single country.

The study suggests family firms on how to foster the realization of innovation opportunities. A greater TMT knowledge exchange allows to realize more innovation opportunities and the TMT characteristics emerged as the drivers of this TMT knowledge exchange. As such, family firms should examine the interaction of their TMT composition in terms of non-family and family members with the effort that the CEO deploys to search for innovation opportunities outside the firm.

Empirical investigation of the link between family ownership, absorptive capacity and innovation performance by considering TMT behavior and characteristics.

This study aims to investigate the impact of chief executive officers' (CEO’s) core self-evaluation and grandiose narcissism on firm performance. This work combines bright and dark personality sides to explore how complex CEO's behavioral characteristics affect firms' outcomes. In addition, top management team (TMT) behavioral integration is considered as an organizational setting that acts as a conductive device bridging CEOs behavioral characteristics with firms' performance.

The data for this study are based on 187 respondents, including CEOs and TMTs, across medium and large firms in Turkey through an online survey using a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data collected.

The study finds that only CEO-TMT narcissism and TMT behavioral integration have a positive direct effect on firm financial performance. Contrary to expectations, CEO-TMT core self-evaluation has a negative direct effect on firm performance. Moreover, the results show that environmental dynamism interacts positively and significantly with CEO-TMT narcissism. Thus, the claim that TMT behavioral integration has a mediating effect is not supported in the context of medium and large firms in Turkey.

This study contributes to the upper echelons theory (UET) literature by highlighting the boundary conditions under which narcissistic CEOs can interact with more behaviorally integrated TMT members to exchange information, make joint decisions and collaborate in a relatively dynamic environment, as well as aggregating the bright side and dark side of CEOs personality traits and examining their effects alongside those of TMT behavioral integration on the firm performance. Finally, this study enriches the upper echelons literature by providing evidence from Turkey.