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This study examines how technical drivers as well as social drivers influence organic communication and top management involvement (TMI) in new product development (NPD) projects. Technical drivers are of strategic importance and product innovativeness and social drivers are of intrinsic and extrinsic relevance. Organic communication is defined as continuous, bidirectional and informal communication between top management and the NPD teams. Further, arguing that TMI must be studied as a multifaceted construct, it is conceptualized to occur as guidance, active motivation and providing resources and creating a tolerant climate. Subsequently, the effect of TMI and organic communication on NPD performance is investigated.

The data set, collected via surveys from top managers and project managers involved in 86 NPD projects in 85 firms, is analyzed using PLS structural equation modeling.

The authors show that the strategic importance of the project has a positive influence on TMI through active motivation, providing resources and creating a tolerant climate for innovation, but does not have an effect on guidance. Results also show that active motivation and organic communication improve budget and schedule adherence, whereas providing guidance and stimulating a tolerant climate have detrimental effects. In summary, the results show that only active motivation enhances all types of performance while stimulating a tolerant climate appears to have the opposite effect. The results revealed that organic communication between top management and the NPD team has a strong positive effect on all elements of TMI (providing guidance, actively motivating the NPD team, providing resources and creating a tolerant climate). In other words, when top management communicates with the NPD team throughout the project in an informal way and listens to them in addition to engaging in a one-way communication, they are more likely to be seen by the team as being deeply involved in the project.

Executives must walk a managerial tightrope to actively motivate and to assist in providing resources, yet they must not be overbearing with direct guidance and must limit their tolerance for failures.

Involvement of key organizational actors such as top management and the link to project performance has attracted significant attention in research. However, nuanced empirical insights into the dyad of top management and project teams has so far been absent. The study’s findings detail the effect of technical and social drivers of top management involvement in new product development projects. Most notably, (1) the effect of motivation and stimulating a tolerant climate on performance, and (2) the effect of organic communication on top management involvement. Moreover, this study is unique in that it empirically examines TMI from both top management and team perspectives.

The authors seek to analyze the impact of weak corporate governance by top executives of a firm on the firm's earnings reports. This research is meant to further emphasize the impact of co-opted executives on a firm, primarily through their impact on earnings management.

Using financial data from 11,473 firm-year observations, the authors utilize ordinary least squares (OLS), 2-stage IV regressions, propensity score matching (PSM) and entropy balancing to analyze the impact of a co-opted top management team on discretionary accruals and restatements.

The authors find empirical evidence that firms with weak corporate governance from top executives are more likely to manipulate reported earnings and have lower financial reporting quality. The authors also find that the effect of co-opted executives on earnings management is weaker when a chief executive officer's (CEO’s) incentives are not aligned with those of top executives, suggesting that executives prevent earnings management due to reputational concerns. Co-opted chief financial officers (CFOs) increase the magnitude of earnings management in a firm but are not solely responsible for the authors' results.

The authors' results suggest that the top executive team provides an important first defense in the prevention of earnings management and corporate wrongdoing. Co-option of the top executive team may be an important consideration when doing research into corporate governance.

The chapter sheds light on how top management teams (TMTs) across multinational firms tackle the ongoing disruptive digital transformation during the pandemic era. The chapter includes basic definitions and global and regional trends on data governance and digital transformation across multinational firms from advanced and emerging markets. Finally, it provides several case studies demonstrating the theoretical and practical applicability of how data governance and digital transformation emerged from top management team perspectives. The chapter outlines the importance of leadership and top management in dealing with emerging technologies and business processes across global firms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between sustainable leadership and sustainable project performance. Specifically, the study aims to examine the mediating role of knowledge integration, examining how knowledge integration within an organization influences project outcomes. In addition, the study seeks to explore the moderating role of top management knowledge values, examining how the values and beliefs of top management influence the relationship between sustainable leadership and project performance.

A three-wave survey of 392 employees working in construction sector projects in Pakistan used both hierarchical regression analysis and Hayes’ PROCESS macro method to evaluate the hypotheses.

The study results show that sustainable leadership positively relates to sustainable project performance and knowledge integration mediating this relationship. In addition, the top management knowledge value moderates the indirect effect of sustainable leadership on sustainable project performance via knowledge integration.

Although the model was tested using three-wave data, it is important to note that the data were obtained from a single source. Therefore, it is possible that common method bias may have influenced the results, and this cannot be disregarded.

Organizations seek to prioritize sustainability and integrate sustainability considerations into their project management processes. Organizations can achieve improved sustainable project performance by investing in sustainable leadership development, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and learning, prioritizing top management support for sustainable performance and integrating sustainable considerations into project management processes.

The study’s grounding on organizational learning theory adds an original and valuable perspective to the relationship between sustainable leadership and sustainable project performance. This investigation is original, as it combines sustainable leadership, knowledge integration and the moderating role of top management knowledge value to understand their impact on sustainable project performance. This unique approach contributes to the literature by providing new insights into these relationships and mechanisms in the construction industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the agile project management (APM) approach through the contextual ambidextrous lens by overcoming the traditional perspective that separates projects within the opposite planned-exploitation- and emergent-exploration-oriented forms.

This study uses a grounded approach to five different agile-oriented companies for discovering how agile adoption shows both emergent (exploration-oriented) and planned (exploitation-oriented) tensions in a perspective that connects, rather than separates, them.

This study discovers five main categories, namely, approach, objectives, boundaries, leadership and feedback, that capture the tensions between planned and emergent issues of agile projects. The identified variables interact with different intervening conditions of the APM attributes (i.e. road map, product backlog, team backlog and solution delivery), activating different response actions (“exploitation embedded in exploration” and vice-versa), requiring, as a consequence, the need for contextual ambidexterity.

This study identifies different implications based on real project contexts, as the importance of a more complete picture of the APM approach, which also considers the combination of planned and emergent aspects of projects and, as consequence, the needs for dual capacities (T-shaped skills) both at project management and team levels.

This study identifies, in real project contexts, the relevance of integration between the corporate level and the agile project team. This implies the search for constant dialogue, with feedback exchange spread across all levels, also enabled by an integrated leadership approach.

This study highlights agile tensions in a real-world project context by describing how APM connects both explorative and exploitative aspects of change within the same APM initiative, in order to manage such tensions, which differs from previous studies that consider APM in alternation with a linear project management approach as stage-gate.

This study examines the relation between pay inequalities in top management teams and how efficiently firms convey valuation-relevant information to investors. Given that reward comparisons with reference groups create feelings of inequity, top management team pay inequalities can impair the information environment. This manifests into lengthier or less readable financial reports.

This paper employs an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model to test whether and how the pay distribution in the top management team is associated with the readability of the annual report. It also employs a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression model to further address the endogeneity concern. Lastly, it conducts cross-sectional analyses to examine heterogeneity in the observed relation.

Using the intra-firm pay gap as a proxy for pay inequality and file size, Bog Index and Fog Index of the 10-K filings as a proxy for financial report readability, the author finds that firms with larger pay gaps exhibit lengthier or less readable 10-K filings. The main findings are robust to the use of an instrumental variable approach. She finds some evidence that the relation is less pronounced when pay gaps are justified by explicit legal authority of CEOs or high ability of CEOs. The main results are robust to considerations of alternative explanations.

This paper adds a new dimension to the debate on pay inequality by studying pay gaps in the top management team and financial report readability. The author's findings have important implications for executive compensation policies and for corporate disclosure policies.

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.

This study aims to focus on the resource-based faultline of a top management team (TMT) and intends to investigate the impact of TMT resource-based faultline on corporate green innovation, by indicating the environmental management as a mediator and slack resources as a moderator to understand the relationship.

Based on the empirical data of Chinese listed manufacturing companies from 2008 to 2020, this study assesses the hypotheses using an OLS model with fixed effects of time and industry.

The results indicate that TMT resource-based faultline is significantly negatively correlated with corporate green innovation. The conclusion remains valid after endogeneity tests and robustness checks. Mechanism test shows that environmental management plays a mediating role in the association between TMT resource-based faultline and corporate green innovation. Moreover, slack resources diminish the negative association between TMT resource-based faultline and corporate green innovation.

The study not only expands the theoretical understanding of the deeper motivation of TMT faultline on corporate green innovation, but also provides a practical reference for optimizing the human resource allocation of the TMT and accelerating green transformation development.

This paper aims to conceptualize the role of leadership in organizational learning processes in multinational companies (MNCs). The authors present a model describing how managers in an MNC facilitated transitions between sub-processes of organizational learning at several organizational levels.

The authors collected data from the plants of a global process company in Norway, Brazil and China. Observation, in-depth interviews and archival material enabled one to reconstruct the organizational learning process over a period of 30 years as the company developed its own tailor-made improvement programme.

Based on the data, the authors describe the role of leadership in linking the sub-processes of organizational learning as orchestration, sponsoring and persistence. Orchestration included creating faith and optimism and designing the organization to allow close cooperation between operators and managers in the sub-process of experimenting. This eased transferring and institutionalizing in the global organization. Sponsoring included structural changes to support transferring and the demonstration of dedication to improvement programme values. These factors were important for institutionalizing. Persistence involved the continuous focus on adjustment of the improvement programme, which then facilitated further experimenting.

Firstly, this study suggests that activities and decisions in one sub-process have important implications for the following sub-processes. Secondly, this study indicates that leaders’ role in facilitating the transitions between sub-processes extend beyond their individual traits and behaviour, which previous research had focused on, and includes decisions concerning organizational structure and culture that help link social and organizational learning.

The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of project critical success factors (CSFs) on change management in the context of business process management (BPM). Despite widespread interest in BPM, the existing literature is insufficient in addressing the antecedents that contribute to change management in business process projects.

Key factors of change management success in BPM projects were initially identified in a systematic literature review (SLR) and were used as antecedents of change management through a structural equation modeling (SEM) with 464 business project stakeholders. Next, a neural network analysis allowed the key factors to be ranked non-linearly. Finally, a latent class analysis (LCA) was performed to determine the sample's heterogeneous groups based on their project management characteristics.

Project management, top management support and technological competencies were the main CSFs identified as having positive effects on change management. The most important factor is project management, followed by top management support, which plays a crucial mediating role in enabling change management. Although relevant, technological competencies were secondary in the study. Regarding project management CSF, four heterogeneous classes of individuals were determined.

Although this study provides an opportunity to observe CSFs, it does not address the need to analyze the phenomenon in different classifications of projects, regarding maturity, complexity, project management approach and other aspects that differentiate projects in a meaningful way.

The study allows practitioners to understand the critical factors underlying change management and take necessary actions to manage it, recognizing that individuals have heterogeneous profiles regarding project management.

This study pioneeringly discusses the CSFs of change management BPM projects to enable successful change management, ranking the main factors and mapping heterogeneous profiles.