Top management team demographic-faultline strength and strategic change: What role does environmental dynamism play?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Richard, Orlando Curtae'; Wu, Jie; Markoczy, Livia Anna; Chung, Yunhyung
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; University of Macau; University of Idaho
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.3009
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 987-1009
• 关键词: demographic faultline strength; ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMISM; gender and diversity in organizations; STRATEGIC CHANGE; upper echelons theory

摘要

Research summaryDrawing on the demographic faultline perspective and the concept of attribute-specific faultlines, we investigate the effect of top management team (TMT) relationship-related (gender, age, educational level) and task-related (functional background, tenure) faultline strengths on strategic change. In a panel study (2003-2015), we find that TMT relationship-related faultline strength (especially educational-level) negatively influences strategic change whereas TMT task-related faultline strength positively affects strategic change. Environmental dynamism reduces the negative effect of TMT gender and educational-level faultline strengths on strategic change while in fact revealing a notable positive effect between TMT age-faultline strength and strategic change. Additionally, environmental dynamism strengthens the positive effects of task-related TMT faultline strength on strategic change. We offer theoretical and practical implications to both the demographic faultlines and upper echelons research domains. Managerial summaryTop management teams (TMTs) in firms can fracture into subgroups based on demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and education level) as well as based on task-related characteristics (e.g., functional background, and tenure). We call the former relationship-related faultlines and the latter task-related faultlines. We predict and find that stronger relationship based faultlines hinders between subgroup cohesion, reducing TMTs' ability to initiate strategic change. We also predict and find that stronger task-related faultlines facilitate inter-subgroup knowledge-sharing, improving TMTs' ability to initiate strategic change. We find that environmental dynamism reduces the negative effect of most relationship-related faultlines (except age where this effect is positive) on strategic change, while strengthening the positive effect of task-related faultline strengths on strategic change.