Top Management Team Tenure Diversity and Performance: The Moderating Role of Behavioral Integration

Integrating insights from organizational information processing theory and social categorization theory, we examine how top management team (TMT) tenure diversity affects team performance. We propose a theoretical framework that examines how these two conflicting processes occur simultaneously withi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on engineering management 2018-02, Vol.65 (1), p.21-33
Main Authors: Yi, Yaqun, Ndofor, Hermann Achidi, He, Xiaoming, Wei, Zelong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral integration
Classification
Cultural differences
Data processing
Decision making
Indexes
Information processing
Organizations
Separation
Silicon compounds
Tenure
tenure diversity
tenure separation
tenure variety
top management team (TMT)
Uncertainty
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Integrating insights from organizational information processing theory and social categorization theory, we examine how top management team (TMT) tenure diversity affects team performance. We propose a theoretical framework that examines how these two conflicting processes occur simultaneously within diverse TMTs by arguing that TMT tenure variety influences information processing while TMT tenure separation influences the social categorization process. We argue for the presence of nonlinear relationships between tenure variety, tenure separation, and team performance. Furthermore, we propose that these relationships are moderated by the level of TMT behavioral integration. Based on a sample of 357 senior managers from 126 firms in China, we find that both TMT tenure variety and TMT tenure separation have opposing and nonlinear relationships with TMT performance, and the relationship between TMT tenure separation and TMT performance is moderated by the level of TMT behavioral integration. Our results help clarify the conflicting conclusions of previous TMT tenure diversity research. Our findings suggest that the effect of diversity depends on the type of diversity as they affect different processes. Our findings also explain how the opposing effects of both information processing and social categorization can occur simultaneously in the TMT. Furthermore, the effects of both processes are not linear while the level of diversity variety and diversity separation can affect the marginal effects. Finally, TMT behavioral integration processes affect how tenure diversity plays its role in team performance.
ISSN:0018-9391
1558-0040
DOI:10.1109/TEM.2017.2737663