Abstract
Whether chief executive officer (CEO) turnover can improve top management team (TMT) creativity is an important issue that remains to be solved. Based on the theoretical background of CEO turnover, team creativity, and cross-cultural context, this study proposes a theoretical model to answer the question and introduces leadership identity as a moderator simultaneously. The multiple regression analysis of data obtained from 903 executives in 104 top management teams revealed CEO voluntary resignation/internal succession pattern, CEO voluntary resignation/external succession pattern, and CEO forced resignation/internal succession pattern separately had a significant positive impact on TMT creativity in a cross-cultural context; leadership identity partially moderated the relationship between CEO turnover and TMT creativity. According to these findings, only three patterns of CEO turnover could promote TMT creativity, and leadership identity enhanced the positive effects of CEO voluntary resignation/internal succession pattern, CEO voluntary resignation/external succession pattern, and CEO forced resignation/internal succession pattern on TMT creativity in a cross-cultural context. These made up for the lack of theoretical research on the relationships among CEO turnover, TMT creativity and leadership identity, which could provide the scientific guidance to conduct the CEO turnover practice and improve TMT creativity in a cross-cultural context.
Highlights
With the integration of the world economy and the increasing number of global cities, more and more enterprises go abroad to carry out the transnational business activities and form the cross-cultural enterprises, cross-cultural management has become a hot research topic
The multiple regressions are performed to analyze the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) turnover on top management team (TMT) creativity and the moderating effect of leadership identity between CEO turnover and TMT creativity
Age is significantly negatively correlated with TMT creativity; tenure is significantly positively correlated with leadership identity, and education level is significantly positively correlated with TMT creativity
Summary
With the integration of the world economy and the increasing number of global cities, more and more enterprises go abroad to carry out the transnational business activities and form the cross-cultural enterprises, cross-cultural management has become a hot research topic. Compared with a general team, TMT in a multinational corporation is at a higher level of management, undertakes a larger mission, handles the more complex tasks, and requires team members to have more knowledge and skills; TMT creativity in a cross-cultural context is worthy of study by scholars. Some scholars have noticed this and studied the internal mechanism, in which paternalistic leadership and transformational leadership influenced TMT creativity (Chang et al, 2016; Kim, 2017) These studies show team creativity is the crystallization of collective wisdoms to TMT members, and the leadership behavior is a crucial factor affecting TMT creativity; the scientific leadership behavior contributes to motivating TMT creativity. If the CEO as the leader of TMT changed, how would it affect TMT creativity in a crosscultural context?
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