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We investigate whether active involvement of private equity firms in their portfolio companies during the holding period of a later-stage private equity investment is related to increased levels in operating performance of these companies. Our analysis of unique survey data on 267 European buyouts and secondary performance data on 29 portfolio companies using partial least squares structural equation modeling indicates that private equity firms, that is, their board representatives, can increase operating performance not only by monitoring the behavior of top managers of portfolio companies, but also by becoming involved in strategic decisions and supporting top managers through the provision of strategic resources. Strategic resources, in particular expertise and networks, provided by private equity firm representatives in the form of financial and strategic involvement are associated with increases in the financial performance and competitive prospects of portfolio companies. Operational involvement, however, is not related to changes in operating performance. In addition to empirical insights into the different types of involvement and their effects, this chapter contributes to the buyout literature by providing support for the suggested broadening of the theoretical discussion beyond the dominant perspective of agency theory through developing and testing a complementary resource-based view of involvement. This allows taking into account not only the monitoring, but also the more entrepreneurial supporting element of involvement by private equity firms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of senior managers in managing intra-and inter-organizational relationships with key customers and the factors that influence such involvement in a novel context in the Arab Middle East region.

An exploratory qualitative research design was used in which 68 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted in Jordan with endogenous and Western firms.

Top/senior managers play a significant role in Arab business relationships and in creating value for the firms. Their involvement in key accounts is imperative at all levels – strategic, operational, and relational – mainly due to cultural and institutional factors that are unique to the Arab context.

The study is limited to operations in one emerging country situated in a novel setting in one particular region of the world, which is the Middle East.

Arab senior managers’ participation is imperative and should continue with their relatively intense involvement with key accounts. For foreign investors operating in that part of the world, it is highly recommended that senior management have a more a hands-on approach when dealing with the Arab key customer and to focus more on the relational aspect of key account management than on the organizational aspect.

This paper adds to the very limited number of studies on senior management involvement in key account management, making a theoretical and practical contribution and adding insight on how to manage the relationship with the Arab key customer.

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 purpose of the study is to examine the role of top management in effective key account management (KAM) relationships, making a distinction between top management commitment and top management involvement.

The study uses data from 304 suppliers from different sectors to test the research model and hypotheses developed. Data were collected by means of personal interviews. The survey instrument was a structured questionnaire.

Results show that top management commitment positively affects top management involvement. In addition, top management involvement totally mediates the relationship between top management commitment and relationship quality. Finally, relationship quality positively relates to financial performance.

The study focuses on the role of top management in KAM. Future research that considers the top management’s role simultaneously with other internal or external factors would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of effective KAM. Future studies can also examine the potential detrimental impact of top management involvement in KAM.

Top managers should get actively involved in KAM. The study provides managers with guidance concerning how top management can have the greatest effect on KAM effectiveness.

The study adds to our understanding of the role of top management in KAM. The study provides an integrative empirical examination of the influence of top management in KAM and offer insights on which ways top management determines KAM success.

This study aims to understand the formal and informal practices of top managers as they seek to control product innovation processes and how the style of control used differs during development stages and gates.

A qualitative in-depth case study was conducted at a multinational corporation (pseudonym: MEC). The authors examined 12 product innovation projects and carried out semi-structured interviews to understand the experiences, perceptions and challenges of the people involved in product development projects with a focus on the interactions between top managers and the project teams.

The authors found that MEC uses formal control mechanisms such as a stage-gate model and a project management and reporting system to keep track of the progress of innovation projects. In addition, top managers use informal controls through involvement in innovation activities and interaction with the team members during the stages and gates of the development process. To carry out their control practices top managers use four distinct styles of control as follows: participative, facilitative, empowering and authoritative.

Suggestions are provided for managers on how formal and informal management control tools can be used in innovation processes. The authors show how top managers can broaden their range of interventions by involving themselves in product innovation projects in different ways.

This paper shows how the combination of formal and informal controls can generate a more holistic view of management control in innovation. It also adds to previous conceptualizations of control use by suggesting four distinct styles, which top managers can use to involve themselves in product innovation processes.

Organizations are increasingly reliant on their top management to provide research and development (R&D) units with a strategic focus reflecting changes in their competitive environments. However, little research has specifically explored implications arising from top management involvement in R&D budget setting. This study examines empirically the extent to which such involvement is associated with first, an emphasis on financial factors in setting R&D budgets, and second, with the importance of budget targets for R&D managers. Third, the study evaluates the impact of that involvement on R&D performance evaluation. The results of the research provide evidence of the relation R&D budget setting has to these three factors.

This paper investigates the impacts of globalization processes on the Swiss business elite community during the 1980–2010 period. Switzerland has been characterized in the 20th century by its extraordinary stability and by the strong cohesion of its elite community. To study recent changes, we focus on Switzerland’s 110 largest firms’ by adopting a diachronic perspective based on three elite cohorts (1980, 2000, and 2010). An analysis of interlocking directorates allows us to describe the decline of the Swiss corporate network. The second analysis focuses on top managers’ profiles in terms of education, nationality as well as participation in national community networks that used to reinforce the cultural cohesion of the Swiss elite community, especially the militia army. Our results highlight a slow but profound transformation of top management profiles, characterized by a decline of traditional national elements of legitimacy and the emergence of new “global” elements. The diachronic and combined analysis brings into light the strong cultural changes experienced by the national business elite community.

Implementing total quality management (TQM) is not without difficulties and achieving its promised benefits is not easy. The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers to TQM successful implementation.

A literature review has been done to explore the major reasons for the failure of TQM programmes.

An examination of 54 TQM empirical studies identified 54 obstacles to successful TQM implementation. There are both theoretical and practical difficulties in applying TQM in organisations. An ineffective TQM package, inappropriate TQM implementation methods and an inappropriate environment for implementing TQM are the main reasons for TQM failure. The most frequently mentioned reasons for TQM implementation failures include insufficient education and training, lack of employees’ involvement, lack of top management support, inadequate resources, deficient leadership, lack of a quality-oriented culture, poor communication, lack of a plan for change and employee resistance to the change programme.

The review was limited to articles written in English language during the past 30 years (1980-2010).

TQM does deliver better performance when an appropriate model of TQM is appropriately implemented in a supportive environment. The findings of this paper provide managers with a practical understanding of the factors that are likely to obstruct TQM implementation. Managers should overcome these barriers to achieve the TQM benefits.

Understanding the factors that are likely to obstruct TQM implementation will help organisations in planning better TQM models.

We analyze the role of top managers in the process of improving existing products in large established firms. The results of an inductive study reveal two key arguments. First, we find that the process is an “involved” top-down approach, rather than middle-up-down or bottom-up, discussed in previous studies on new product creation. Top managers actively participate throughout the process, taking on four roles: evaluation of product market performance, selection of products for improvement, initiation of the innovation process through delegation to middle managers of the responsibility to organize bottom-level employees to take actions toward product improvement, and monitoring of progress to ensure improvement (ESIM). Top managers become involved as necessary to reduce the resistance of people at the middle and lower levels to change in current routines. Second, we find that in companies that achieve superior product improvement, managers have well-developed professional absorptive capacity and have routinized frequent interactions to evaluate, select, initiate, and monitor. Other characteristics of managers, such as personal absorptive capacity, incentive system, or mandate from above, are common across both high and low performers.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how political activities and processes influence sensemaking and sensegiving among top management, middle management and employees and to examine its consequences for implementing new knowledge.

Data were collected in a Norwegian bank using in-depth interviews with middle managers and financial advisers. Observations of meetings, informal conversations and verbatim notes were also used in data collection among top managers. A practice-based approach was used as an analytical lens.

Top managers' political activities of excluding others from the decision process affect their sensemaking and resulted in sensegiving contradictions between spoken intent and how to change practice. Middle managers' political activities were to accept top managers' sensegiving instead of managing themselves in their own sensemaking to help financial advisers with how to change their role and practice. As a result, middle managers' sensemaking affects their engagement in sensegiving. For financial advisers, the political processes of top and middle managers resulted in resistance and not making sense of how to change and implement new knowledge.

A total of 30 in-depth interviews, observations of five meetings and informal conversations might call for further studies. In addition, a Norwegian study does not account for other countries' cultural differences concerning leadership style, openness in decisions and employee autonomy.

To the author's knowledge, no studies identify the three-way conceptual relationship between political activities, sensemaking and sensegiving. In addition, the author believes that the originality lies in investigating these relationships using a three-level hierarchy of top management, middle management and employees.