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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.

We study the relationship between firms’ top management teams (TMT) and internationalization complexity. We consider the effect of three different sets of TMT characteristics – international business orientation intensity, education intensity, and team diversity – on three different and increasingly complex facets of internationalization - international markets intensity, international operations intensity and international country diversity. We argue that more international, highly-educated and diverse TMTs are better able to face the complexity derived from international competition. The results of our empirical analysis show that TMTs having foreign managers or managers with international experience are more likely to be in charge of firms facing higher international operations intensity. Conversely, more educated and more diverse TMTs are associated with complexity deriving from international diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of top management team (TMT) team trust in examining the relationship between team processes (internal and external) and human resource management (HRM) decision performance (quality and satisfaction) in the context of the People’s Republic of China.

The sample data of this study include 524 team members from 76 TMTs in east China’s Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui provinces. IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0 software was employed for the data analysis.

The study finds that TMT internal and external processes have significant positive effects on HRM decision quality and satisfaction. The study further finds that TMT team trust partially mediates the relationship between TMT processes (internal and external processes) and HRM decision quality and satisfaction.

This research provides useful insights into the role of TMT team trust in enhancing managerial decision performance.

This study is among the limited studies that explore the influence of team trust in the relationship between TMT processes (internal and external processes) and HRM decision quality and satisfaction among TMTs in China. This study has extended TMT knowledge in mainstream management with guidelines on how to enhance organizational decision performance.

This paper examined the relationship between TMT demographic properties and firm performance using diversity and level variables and measuring differing constructs of firm performance representing divergent strategies.

Structural equation modelling was used to test the relationships between TMT demographic properties and firm performance measured as return on net operating assets (RNOA), and its disaggregates profit margin (PM) and asset turnover (ATO). Data were from 89 Finnish firms during the years 2008–2011, resulting in 320 observations.

TMT team tenure had associations with RNOA through both PM and ATO while TMT age, age diversity, firm tenure, firm tenure diversity and team tenure diversity showed paths through ATO. TMT firm tenure diversity showed effects in opposing directions through PM and ATO.

The results help to understand and apply the separate effects of age, firm tenure and team tenure on TMT and firm performance. These results also provide explanations on how these TMT properties affect firm performance in diverse types of firms pursuing different strategies.

The results suggest that both diversity and level in a measured TMT demographic property are linked with firm performance, and the effect can be in differing directions. These links go through differing paths when using disaggregated operational firm performance measures. Also, diversity in top management is not always beneficial since it can cause separation or conflict impairing performance.

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 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 the study is to examine the interaction between the structure of the top management team, takeover defense mechanisms and firms rate of collective actions.

The study uses elements of agency theory, prospect theory and competitive dynamics research to develop a model for examining heterogeneity in the rate of collective actions among firms in the technology sector. A sample of 299 firm-year observations arrayed into panel regression analyses is used.

The findings from this study show a positive relationship between the size of the top management team and the count of collective actions when takeover defense mechanisms are present. Further this study finds a negative relationship between top management team ownership and collective actions when these same takeover defense mechanisms are present. Additionally, the female ratio of the top management team is negatively related to collective actions.

This study was conducted using a sample of technological firms. These relationships may not be generalizable to firms in other contexts. Further, other elements of the firm’s governance structure (i.e. board of directors or shareholders) may play an important role in the strategic decision-making process.

This study expands on existing research by linking several blocks of literature, top management team literature, competitive dynamics literature and corporate governance literature, into a model to examine firm structural characteristics on the heterogeneity in the propensity to formulate collective actions among firms.

Although prior studies have found that transactive memory system (TMS) in top management team (TMT) can enable innovation ambidexterity, works that focus on only the direct role of TMS and neglect the question of how the differentiated knowledge of the TMS are integrated. The purpose of this paper is to further elucidate how a TMS promotes ambidexterity and examine both its mechanism process and the conditions influencing the process.

This study is based on a questionnaire survey of 94 high-tech enterprises in China.

The findings show that the positive relationship between TMS usage and innovation ambidexterity is mediated by TMT shared leadership, which refers to collective decision-making behaviors and can integrate the heterogeneous knowledge of the TMS into coherent strategic forms. The authors also found that having a TMS was more positively related to innovation ambidexterity via shared leadership when top managers have high team learning goal orientation or high team performance approach goal orientation.

This research contributes to the literature on the antecedents of innovation ambidexterity by showing the effects of TMS and TMT shared leadership, responding to the call to explore how TMT cognitive structures interact with behavioral processes to shape ambidexterity. This study also contributes to TMS research by taking team goal orientations into consideration, which promotes understanding of the effectiveness of TMS in an achievement context. In addition, the authors bring distributed cognition to the fore as a novel fuel for understanding how shared leadership forms.

Conflicts among top management team (TMT) members have a significant impact on sustainable development of family enterprises in China. The complex attributes of different kinds of conflicts in a TMT have dual effects on firm performance and its stability. Thus, avoiding conflicts in a TMT through a systematic conflict management strategy is very important. This paper aims to therefore investigate how to maximize the performance and income level of the TMT in family enterprises through managing conflict systematically, while adopting the best conflict coping strategies.

In this study, the authors apply conflict coping strategies as a useful tool of conflict management and propose five kinds of dynamic conflict coping strategies among TMT members. Repeated game and multi-agent simulation by computer experiment are used to dynamically simulate the rules and evolution of individual conflict coping strategy choices.

It is found that with the passage of time, different conflict coping strategies have different effects on earnings of individuals and teams at different conflict levels. It is also revealed that conflict coping strategies affect not only the earnings of individuals and teams but also their distribution; it also reflects the conflict level in TMT of a family enterprise but in reverse.

This study contributes to the existing literature on conflict management in relevance to the choice and revolution of conflict coping strategies in a Chinese business culture context. It focuses on strengthening the unity and cooperation of TMT members. Controlling the conflict level of TMT members at a reasonable level, investigating the primary cause of conflict and identifying its nature lead to better performance of the TMT and the sustainable development of Chinese family enterprises. Based on these outcomes, different conflict coping strategies can be appropriately used to solve TMT conflicts.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of top management’s customer interactions (TMCI) on customer satisfaction. This study argues that TMCI’s overall relationship with customer satisfaction follows an inverted-U shape due to its positive and disruptive effects on the customer relationship efforts of frontline service/sales employees (FSEs). This paper further investigates the frontline competence of both FSEs and the top management team (TMT) as moderators of the impact of TMCI on customer satisfaction.

The conceptual model was tested empirically using data from managers, frontline employees and customers of microfinance firms. A multilevel structural equation modeling approach was used to test the hypothesized model.

The results show that TMCI has a curvilinear relationship with customer satisfaction. The results also show that frontline employees’ collective efficacy attenuates this relationship by shifting the turning point of the curvilinear effect to the right. Furthermore, TMT frontline competence amplifies both the positive and negative effects of TMCI on customer satisfaction.

This study advances knowledge on the effects of TMCI on customer satisfaction and highlights the nuanced relationship between top management involvement and indicators of firm performance.

The findings show the importance of considering the frontline competence of both top management and frontline employees when encouraging TMCI in organizations.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine TMCI’s direct impact on customer satisfaction and propose the frontline competence of both top management and frontline employees as boundary conditions on this relationship.