How to Collect Organizational Design Data at the TMT Level: Best Practices from the StiMa Project

Abstract

Data on top management teams (TMTs) organizational design are rarely available from secondary sources, like commercial databases or balance sheets. Consequently, to comprehend fully how TMTs are organized, researchers have to collect data directly from the key informants, i.e., Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and the other top executives. Despite good practices available in the literature, taking surveys on these individuals is a difficult endower, especially in case of non-US and unlisted firms. This paper reports about the StiMa project: the successful case of a survey addressed to Italian CEOs. We describe in details all the steps we followed in preparing and administering the survey and the additional data collection from secondary sources, through which we integrated survey data. In so doing, we aim to transfer researchers the lessons we learned from our experience and to offer them suggestions for successfully collecting survey data on organizational elements.