Top Management Team Heterogeneity Research Articles

Top Management Team Heterogeneity, Top Management Incentives, and ESG Performance: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

The challenge of balancing economic and social benefits has emerged as a critical issue for corporate sustainable development. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are key considerations for enterprises aiming to enhance both social and economic benefits simultaneously. Based on the upper echelons theory, differences in cognitive foundations and values brought about by top management team heterogeneity can influence corporate decisions. Taking A-share listed companies in China from 2011 to 2022 as samples, we construct a two-way fixed-effects model by firm and year to explore the impact of top management team heterogeneity on corporate ESG performance, and we introduce top management incentives as a moderating variable to further analyze the underlying mechanisms. Our results demonstrate that the gender heterogeneity, functional background heterogeneity, and overseas background heterogeneity of top management teams have significant positive impacts on corporate ESG performance, and monetary compensation incentives and control incentives to top management teams play a positive moderating role, while equity incentives exhibits a negative moderating effect. These findings remain robust across alternative measures of corporate ESG ratings and monetary and control incentives, and through the SYS-GMM model test and instrumental variable approach to address endogeneity. This research contributes to the literature on corporate ESG by validating and extending the understanding of how top management team characteristics affect organizational outcomes, and it provides practical guidance for enhancing corporate ESG practices. The implications of this study suggest that to enhance corporate ESG performance, enterprises should prioritize the promotion of top management team heterogeneity and tailor their incentive mechanisms accordingly.

The impact of BIM-based integration management on megaproject performance in China

With the rapid development of the global economy, the investment boom in megaprojects worldwide has been on the rise in the past several decades. As large temporary contract organizations, megaprojects are generally confronted with performance dilemmas. The managerial advantage of building information modeling (BIM) has been recognized as one of the critical factors for the success of megaprojects. In particular, BIM-based integration management (BIM IM) signifies the logical and reasonable coordination and integration of the required processes during the whole life-cycle of projects, which facilitates the implementation and management of megaprojects. However, limited empirical research has explored effective pathways for BIM IM in improving megaproject performance (MP). Thus, this study establishes a novel conceptual framework to explore the impacts of BIM IM on MP through information sharing (IS) and cooperation behavior (CB), as well as considering the moderating effects of top management team (TMT) heterogeneity and task conflict (TC). The empirical data were collected in megaprojects in China using the questionnaire survey, and data from 206 middle-senior managers was analyzed by structural equation modeling partial least-squares method. The research findings reveal the effectiveness of BIM IM in promoting IS and CB in megaprojects for ultimate MP. More specifically, BIM IM has a larger effect on IS than CB, and CB has a more profound impact on MP than IS. Meanwhile, TMT heterogeneity plays a negative moderating effect on the relationship between IS and MP, while TC shows a positive moderating effect on the relationship between CB and MP. The findings of this study provide new perspectives and practical strategies for stakeholders to support the effective use of BIM IM to achieve strategic management in megaprojects worldwide.

The Association of Demographic Characteristics and Top Management Team Heterogeneity on Hospital Performance

This study aims to show how the demographic characteristics and heterogeneity of the top management team (TMT) associate with hospital’s performance as measured by the balanced scorecard (BSC). The study employs cross-sectional primary data from hospitals in Central Java Indonesia, collected from 242 hospitals. The result shows that the demographic characteristics including age, female, period of experience serving as TMT, level and specialization of education, were not associated with the hospital’s performance. Likewise, the short period of experience in the organization inside or outside of a hospital’s TMT members was not associated with the hospital’s performance. However, TMT’s heterogeneity showed a positive result towards the hospital’s performance. The academic and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Interpersonal Factors on Enterprises' Innovation Performance

In the current economic society, innovation is not only the key to the sustainable development of many enterprises, but also an imperative in the development of the country. The way to improve the innovation performance of enterprises this issue is now a lot of enterprises are very concerned about. All major companies want to understand the different impacts it brings to business management. Therefore, this paper starts from the four dimensions of ambidextrous leadership, paradoxical leadership, heterogeneity of top management team and stability of top management team to explore the impact of interpersonal factors on innovation performance. It is found that ambidextrous leadership and paradoxical leadership have a positive impact on the innovation performance of enterprises; the stability of the top management team always has a positive impact on the innovation performance of enterprises; and the heterogeneity of the top management team has different impacts on the innovation performance of enterprises according to different heterogeneous situations.

Top Management Team Heterogeneity and Team behavior Integration Effects on Private Higher Education Institutional Performance in China

Top Management Team Heterogeneity and Team behavior Integration Effects on Private Higher Education Institutional Performance in China

Why do firms fail? A new view on bankruptcy from the angle of top management team heterogeneity

Avoiding bankruptcy is a crucial task for any firm’s top management team (TMT), and reasons for the failure to accomplish it have long been studied. While financial metrics can predict near-term bankruptcy, governance characteristics increase precision in the long term. With TMT heterogeneity, we introduce a powerful predictor for the critical time frame in between. Grounded in upper echelons theory, we argue that TMT age heterogeneity increases while heterogeneity in TMT pay and TMT functional backgrounds decreases the bankruptcy probability. We test our hypotheses using a unique dataset of large, public U.S. firms, about half of which filed for bankruptcy between 2001 and 2020. Our results support our research model and show how TMT heterogeneity significantly predicts bankruptcy. We contribute to both bankruptcy and strategic management research by underscoring the importance of TMT heterogeneity as a level of analysis when predicting bankruptcy and add to the ongoing discussion on the impact of TMT pay differences on firm performance. Additionally, we offer valuable insights to practitioners navigating their firms in times of crisis and to regulators shaping the insolvency statutes of the future.

How does TMT heterogeneity affect breakthrough innovation? The moderating effect of strategic decision-making logics

PurposeDrawing on the upper echelons theory, this study focuses on how top management team (TMT) heterogeneity affects breakthrough innovations and examines how strategic decision-making logic (including causation and effectuation) moderates the relationship between TMT heterogeneity and breakthrough innovation.Design/methodology/approachBy conducting an empirical test of 227 sample firms in China, the authors applied linear hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses on the TMT heterogeneityinnovation relationship and the moderating roles of causation and effectuation.FindingsThe empirical tests show that TMT heterogeneity positively affects breakthrough innovation, and both causation and effectuation positively moderate the positive relationship between TMT heterogeneity and breakthrough innovation. In addition, effectuation has a stronger moderating effect on the positive correlation between TMT heterogeneity and breakthrough innovation than causation.Originality/valueThis study extends the upper echelons theory to explain how the characteristics of TMTs affect firm innovation. Specifically, the authors explore the TMT heterogeneity–breakthrough innovation relationship from the perspectives of information processing and core competence and reveal the boundary condition of strategic decision-making logic in the correlation between TMT heterogeneity and breakthrough innovation. In this vein, the authors contribute to the literature by untangling the internal mechanisms between TMT heterogeneity and breakthrough innovation and extending the discussion on effectuation theory from the entrepreneurship domain to the innovation field. Furthermore, the research findings can provide helpful implications for TMTs to manage breakthrough innovation effectively.

How Technological, Organizational, and Environmental Factors Drive Enterprise Digital Innovation: Analysis Based on the Dynamic FsQCA Approach

Improving the level of digital industry innovation is of great significance to enhance the competitiveness of China’s digital industry and improve the sustainable development advantages of the digital economy. Based on the technology–organization–environment framework (TOE framework), this paper establishes a multi-stage configuration analysis model of factors affecting enterprises’ digital innovation, selects six antecedent variables from technology, organization, and environment, including R&D investment, high-level talents, organizational size, top management team heterogeneity, industrial development speed, and regional digitalization level, and explores the driving path for improving enterprise digital innovation intention and digital innovation performance under the influence of multi-factor combinations. The results are presented that single factors or single dimensions struggle to stimulate high digital innovation, and the combination configuration of multiple factors has a significant impact. The configuration paths that drive high digital innovation intention include the technology–environment type (TE type) driven by technological and environmental factors, organization–environment type (OE type) driven by organizational and environmental factors and technology–organization–environment type (TOE type) driven by technological, organizational, and environmental factors; the configuration paths that drive high digital innovation performance include the technology–organization type (TO type) driven by technological and organizational factors, organization–environment type (OE type) driven by organizational and environmental factors. With the evolution of time, there are configuration solutions with relatively high stability, such as the TE type and OE type that drive high digital innovation intention, and the TO type that drives high digital innovation performance. The results provide a reference for revealing the key influencing factors and driving paths of enterprise digital innovation, and improving the vitality and output level of enterprise digital innovation.

Antecedent configurations and performance of business models of intelligent manufacturing enterprises

Tackling climate change crises needs intelligent manufacturing and effective business models. This paper uses the adaptive structuration theory (AST) and configuration perspective to investigate the effects of digital infrastructure, digital orientation, top management team heterogeneity, servitization, government support, and customer demand uncertainty on the business model of intelligent manufacturing enterprises in China. The fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was employed to analyze the data. The study found that there were five configurations of business model formation, which classified business models into five types: executive-led enhanced, digital leadership-enhanced, adaptive, extended, and complex business models. There was an intrinsic relationship between the five models with respect to the dimensions of digitalization and servitization. Further analysis revealed that executive-led, digital leadership-enhanced, and adaptive business models were positively associated with enterprise performance. The paper discusses the potential implications of these findings.

A Review of Research on the Influence of TMT Heterogeneity on EP

With the strengthening of specialization and division of labor, the differences among top management team (TMT) gradually increase. The existing literature has explored the relationship between TMT heterogeneity and enterprise performance (EP). Secondly, the intermediary variable of the relationship between TMT heterogeneity and EP is introduced to explore the intermediate process of the influence of TMT heterogeneity on EP. The moderating variables that influence the relationship between the two processes are introduced to explore whether the intermediate process will be affected by other factors and present different characteristics. This paper sorts out and analyzes the existing literature, and puts forward some problems that may need to be paid attention to in the future, so that readers can understand the current situation of the development of this field and the possible future research direction, it also has certain reference value to the construction of the TMT, the cultivation of human capital and the economic upgrading and transformation in China.

Top Management Team Heterogeneity and the Performance of Cross-Border M&A

In this paper, we aim to investigate the impact of the top management team (TMT) on the performance of cross-border M&A, using a sample of 270 cross-border M&A events of Chinese listed companies. We find that the heterogeneity of TMT characteristics could affect the performance of cross-border M&A in different ways. More specifically, a higher heterogeneity in gender can improve the M&A performance significantly, while more heterogeneities in tenure and overseas background lead to a significant reduction in long-term and short-term M&A performances, respectively. We believe that our study can contribute to a different perspective for the selection of the executive teams of M&A companies. This, in turn, is conducive to optimizing the structure of the senior management team, and may help companies make better decisions and improve their performance.

Entrepreneurs' role overload and empowering leadership: A reciprocal relationship based on conservation of resources.

Role overload is not new, but its increasing prevalence in recent years calls for further research. This study considers empowering leadership as a means of resource investment and proposes that it is exerted by entrepreneurs to reduce their role overload. This study adds clarity by revealing how entrepreneurs' role overload is mitigated via the intermediate mechanism of empowering leadership. Hypotheses are derived from conservation of resources theory. Data were collected from 315 entrepreneurs in China using a three-round questionnaire survey. This study finds that entrepreneurs' previous experience of role overload positively relates to their current empowering leadership behavior and their previous empowering leadership behavior negatively relates to their current role overload, which implies a mediating role of empowering leadership. Specifically, the second stage of the indirect effect of previous role overload on current role overload through empowering leadership is moderated by top management team (TMT) heterogeneity. When TMT heterogeneity is higher, the negative indirect effect is stronger. This study contributes to the idea of positive psychology and extends the scope of conservation of resources theory into the fields of entrepreneurship and leadership.

Supplier transaction, TMT characteristics, and the persistence of earnings: do their relationship contribute towards sustainable performance of Chinese listed manufacturing sector firms?

The construction of supplier transaction is one of the strategic choices of many firms. However, the impact of business strategies on the persistence of earnings remains to be further investigated. The innovation of this paper lies in interpreting the impact of supplier transaction on earnings persistence from the perspective of characteristics of the top management team (TMT). We consider Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2012 to 2019 to examine the relationship between the supplier transaction and the persistence of earnings. Statistical results show that supplier transaction characteristics of the TMT have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between the supplier transaction and the persistence of earnings. This implies that the behavior of TMT can be vital to the firm in maintaining sustainable performance. The higher age level or longer average tenure of TMT can significantly improve the positive effect of the supplier transaction tenure heterogeneity of TMT that will significantly improve the negative effect. This paper expands the literature on supplier relationship, and corporate earnings from a new perspective that improves the empirical evidence of the upper echelons theory, and also provides evidence support for the construction of supplier relationship and TMT.

Digital Transformation, Top Management Team Heterogeneity, and Corporate Innovation: Evidence from A Quasi-Natural Experiment in China

Digitalization has brought great changes to economic and social development, and corporate digital transformation has gradually become the focus of academic attention. We explore the economic impacts of digital transformation from the perspective of corporate innovation utilizing a sample of China’s A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2020, depending on the quasi-natural experiment of “Integration of Informatization & Industrialization”. Using the difference-in-differences (DID) model, we document that the growth of innovation considerably tends to rise via corporate digital transformation, and top management team (TMT) heterogeneity plays a positively moderating role in this process. The findings are still reliable after the parallel trend test, PSM-DID, placebo test, and the test of excluding alternative explanations. Extended analyses find that the innovation incentive effect of digital transformation will enhance corporate value in the later stage. Our findings not only contribute to the advancement of the study in digital transformation, but also offer theoretical support and useful advice for furthering corporate digitalization and upgrading the mechanism for creative growth.

Current Status and Prospect of Research on the Functional Background Heterogeneity of Top Management Team

The functional background heterogeneity of top management team has gradually attracted the attention of research in the field of management, and it has also affected firm practice. This paper sorts out the current research status of the heterogeneity of top management team functional background and its relationship with firm value, and finally points out the limitations of existing research from the perspective of firm life cycle. Future research can build a theoretical model of the impact of the functional background heterogeneity of top management team on firm value in different life cycle stages, explore its specific effects, promote the idea of maximizing firm value, and enhance market competitiveness.

The impact of top management team heterogeneity on book-tax differences: An analysis using institutional perspective

The aim linked with the ongoing article is to examine the role of top management team heterogeneity along with audit committee characteristics on the book-tax difference of the Jordanian listed firms. The data has been extracted from the eighteen listed companies from 2009 to 2021 that are listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. To test the hypotheses, a fixed-effect model along with the robust standard error model has been executed. The results revealed positive linkage among the top management team heterogeneity, audit committee characteristics, and book-tax difference of the Jordanian listed firms. These findings are suitable for the regulators who want to develop new policies related to the book-tax difference and top management team heterogeneity along with the new researchers who want to investigate this area in the future.

Executive team heterogeneity and the moral hazard of equity pledging: Evidence from China

This study empirically examines the relationship between executive team heterogeneity and equity pledge moral hazard using data about Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020. We find that increasing top management team heterogeneity (including financial background, overseas background, educational background, gender, and age) can significantly reduce equity pledge moral hazard, while also finding a moderating effect from executive compensation. Our research can help listed companies manage the moral hazards associated with equity pledges from the perspective of the executive team, such as personnel arrangements and compensation adjustments.

Can green process innovation improve both financial and environmental performance? The roles of TMT heterogeneity and ownership

The overuse of natural resources has caused many environmental concerns. Green process innovation (GPI) has been seen as an effective solution that can benefit both industry and society. However, prior studies have not fully examined the contingent mechanisms of the relationship between GPI and both environmental and financial performance. This study fills this research gap. Using the data of 172 manufacturing firms (including 104 state-owned and 68 non-state-owned manufacturing firms) in China, this work investigates the impacts of GPI on both environmental and financial performance, with a particular focus on the moderating roles of top management team (TMT) heterogeneity and firm ownership. The results present valuable findings. First, we found that GPI has a significant positive effect on firms' environmental performance. We also show that although GPI does not improve firms' financial performance significantly in the short term, additional analysis demonstrated that three-year-lagged GPI does indeed have a positive effect on firms' financial performance. Second, we established that strong TMT heterogeneity enhances the link between GPI and firms' environmental and financial performance. Third, we revealed that the relationship between GPI and firms' financial performance is enhanced for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), but, surprisingly, that the link is weakened for SOEs. Overall, the findings of this study present new implications for academics, managers, and policymakers, as they uncover the impacts of GPI on environmental and financial performance by leveraging levels of TMT heterogeneity and firms' ownership status.

The Impact of Resource Bricolage on Entrepreneurial Orientation in Start-ups: The Moderating Roles of TMT Heterogeneity and TMT Behavioral Integration.

Prior studies demonstrate the role of resources in shaping a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation from the resource-based view. We expand this line of research by theorising and testing the impact of resource bricolage on entrepreneurial orientation. Based on the data of 295 start-ups, we find that when start-ups face resource constraints, the strategy of resource bricolage has a significant positive effect on entrepreneurial orientation, and the relationship is positively moderated by top management team (TMT) heterogeneity. Meanwhile, the relationship is negatively moderated by TMT behavioral integration. The results are expected to provide theoretical guidance for start-ups to overcome resource constraints and achieve smooth survival and growth.

RESEARCH ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HETEROGENEITY OF THE TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM(TMT) AND THE TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY(TFP) OF ENTERPRISES

In recent years, the huge negative impact of COVID-19 has slowed down economic growth in many countries. Therefore, it is very important to study how to improve the total factor productivity to promote the development of enterprises. Top management team is the core position of an enterprise and has a key influence on total factor productivity. In China, the role of top management teams at listed companies is increasingly valued. This study analyzes the relationship between the heterogeneity of TMT and TFP based on the data obtained from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2019. In the empirical study, the comprehensive heterogeneity index, age heterogeneity and tenure heterogeneity of top management team were used as proxy variables to construct a regression model, and the LP method was used to calculate TFP. The results are as follows:The comprehensive heterogeneity index of Top management team Has a significant negative impact on total factor productivity; The age heterogeneity of top management team has a significant positive impact on total factor productivity; Top management team tenure heterogeneity has a significant negative impact on total factor productivity.