Mariano L. M. Heyden

Perceived Environmental Dynamism, Relative Competitive Performance, and Top Management Team Heterogeneity: Examining Correlates of Upper Echelons’ Advice-Seeking

Advice-seeking is one of the most basic practices in making real-life decisions and has been shown to be a predominant mode of knowledge acquisition at the upper echelons level. Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in particular seek advice to obtain formulated judgments, opinions, and suggestions about current strategic directions and recommended alternatives for future courses of action. In this study we distinguish between intra-organizational and extra-organizational sources of advice and examine how factors at the environmental, firm, and top management team (TMT) level relate to patterns of CEO advice-seeking. We develop and test hypotheses linking perceived environmental dynamism, relative competitive firm performance, and TMT heterogeneity to CEO advice-seeking from internal and external sources and uncover asymmetric patterns. We discuss implications for upper echelons theory and strategic decision-making research.

The Conjoint Influence of Top and Middle Management Characteristics on Management Innovation

Management innovation entails the introduction of new-to-the-firm changes in management structures, processes, and practices intended to improve organizational functioning. We draw on relational demography theory to elucidate how behavioral dispositions stemming from top management and middle management similarity in professional characteristics (functional background and educational level) and biodemographic characteristics (age and gender) may facilitate management innovation. We argue that while a throughput functional orientation of top management can be expected to stimulate management innovation, greater similarity between top and middle management will strengthen the association between top management throughput orientation and management innovation by (1) engendering consistency in behavioral expectations between the managerial echelons and (2) motivating middle management to engage in extrarole behaviors. We test our theory on a sample of more than 8,000 top and middle managers in a cross-section of 33 organizations from 2000 to 2008 and adopt a novel content analysis-based measure of management innovation. We find compelling support for the moderating influence of professional similarity between top and middle management but uncover more complex patterns for cross-echelon similarity in biodemographic characteristics. We discuss implications for understanding the role of managers in management innovation, joint consideration of top and middle management characteristics in organizational change processes, the interplay between various types of innovation, and the measurement of management innovation. Promising future research directions are suggested.

Rethinking ‘Top‐Down’ and ‘Bottom‐Up’ Roles of Top and Middle Managers in Organizational Change: Implications for Employee Support

In this study we integrate insights from ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ traditions in organizational change research to understand employees’ varying dispositions to support change. We distinguish between change initiation and change execution roles and identify four possible role configurations in which top managers (TMs) and middle managers (MMs) can feature in change. We contend that both TMs and MMs can play change initiation and/or change execution roles, TMs and MMs have different strengths and limitations for taking on different change roles, and their relative strengths and limitations are compounded or attenuated based on the specific configuration of change roles. We subsequently hypothesize employee support for change in relation to different TM-MM change role configurations. Our findings show that change initiated by TMs does not engender above-average level of employee support. However, change initiated by MMs engenders above-average level of employee support, and even more so, if TMs handle the change execution.

Boards of directors and organizational ambidexterity in knowledge-intensive firms

Abstract We examine the relation between boards of directors’ knowledge heterogeneity and organizational ambidexterity (OA) (i.e. simultaneous exploration and exploitation) in knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs). Although the literature on OA has started to emphasize its antecedents, the role of the board remains unaddressed. This is an important omission, as boards have become increasingly involved in strategy-making. In turn, studies on boards have looked at their influence on either exploration- or exploitation-type strategies. Yet, KIFs particularly need to balance both exploration and exploitation to renew their knowledge base. We draw on knowledge-based perspectives to disentangle the benefits and costs of board knowledge heterogeneity for driving OA in KIFs. Our empirical analysis based on a longitudinal panel of UK pharmaceutical firms provides support for our hypothesized U-shaped relation. Our findings suggest that the benefits of knowledge heterogeneity only outweigh the costs beyond a particular threshold. Overall, our theoretical approach and allied findings advance the literature by introducing boundary conditions to the resource provision role of boards in KIFs. We discuss contributions for organizational learning, strategic leadership, and human resource management. We conclude with implications for theory and practice, as well as key opportunities for future research.

External Corporate Governance and Strategic Investment Behaviors of Target CEOs

Hostile takeover attempts are considered a key external governance mechanism aimed at addressing perceived managerial underperformance in a target firm. Studies show that target chief executive officers (CEOs) are usually dismissed shortly after a takeover attempt, regardless of whether the bidder actually completes the acquisition. Yet, little is known about the investment behaviors of target CEOs who actually retain their positions in the wake of an unsuccessful hostile takeover attempt. Engaging with this underexplored governance context, we advance a behaviorally informed model of CEO investment behaviors in response to external governance as a function of the negative performance feedback event of the takeover attempt and the timing of the market’s attempt in terms of the stage of the target CEO’s tenure. Based on a matched-pair study of 71 failed takeover attempts from 1995 to 2006, we find evidence of a nonlinear relation between target CEO tenure and degree of uncertainty of expected returns in subsequent strategic investments in the wake of a failed hostile takeover attempt. We discuss the implications for research on external governance, behavioral agency, and executives’ influences on firm processes and outcomes.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance: Investigating Local Requirements for Entrepreneurial Decision-Making

Abstract Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays an important role in explaining firm performance. In this study, we investigate the relation between EO and performance at the strategic business unit (SBU) level and examine the influence of decision-making mode and social capital of the focal business unit manager. Adopting the attention-based view (ABV) as our main theoretical perspective, we examine the impact of decision-making mode (i.e., participative vs. autocratic) on the EO–performance relation. In addition, we investigate the extent to which strong network ties with actors at lower, similar, and higher hierarchical positions, respectively, enable SBU managers to effectively engage in participative decision-making processes when leveraging EO. Our findings based on 119 SBUs of one large international company provide nuanced insights into how local conditions interact to shape EO’s influence on performance.

Top management team search and new knowledge creation: How top management team experience diversity and shared vision influence innovation

This article probes the vital role a top management team (TMT) plays in the coupling of knowledge elements assembled through local and nonlocal search into radically new, exploratory innovations and incrementally new, exploitative innovations. It theorizes that the materialization of exploratory and exploitative innovations from a firms recombinatory stock of knowledge elements is contingent on the interplay between a TMTs experience diversity and its shared vision. Multigroup structural equation modeling of data from a large cross-section of firms in the Netherlands supports the theoretical model. We find that although greater variation in TMT experiences fosters exploratory innovations, lesser variation promotes exploitative innovations. A shared TMT vision moderates these relationships. We discuss the implications for research and practice.

Women on Corporate Boards and Financial Performance in Fast-Emerging Markets: Insights from Malaysia

In this study, we focus on the relation between female representation on boards of directors and firm financial performance based on evidence from 100 publicly listed firms in Malaysia from 2010 to 2014. Our findings indicate that the presence of at least one female director on the board is positively associated with firm financial performance. However, we find no statistically significant link between having a higher proportion of female directors or the presence of a female CEO-chair on financial performance.

A Study of Negative Reputation in the Workplace

In an attempt to better understand how a negative reputation may affect one’s career, a series of hypotheses which offer an overview of negative personal reputation are tested, utilizing both a lab and a field study. Based upon the existing theory, these hypotheses explore negative reputation in the context of employees in organizations, suggesting that although often negative reputations are undesirable, at times individuals may be motivated to develop such reputations because they may confer benefits to one’s career.

Transgender Individuals in Asian Islamic Countries: An Overview of Workplace Diversity and Inclusion Issues in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia

Workplaces are an important dimension of social life and for helping individuals to satisfy their intrinsic needs for acceptance and belonging. In a society where gender roles are already askew, transgender individuals face particular challenges. Such challenges have been underemphasized in the diversity management literature. In this chapter we discuss empirical evidence of transgender issues and how they are perceived in Asian countries, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. In addition, we outline the specific challenges faced by transgender individuals in the context of constitutional precincts, religious perceptions, and socio-economic circumstances. We argue and find that regulators, social actors and institutions in Asian Islamic countries de-emphasize the gender criteria when hiring, as well as in commonplace operations, to enrich the institutional human capital and, ultimately, work performance. We develop a future research agenda for informing individuals, organizational leaders, and policy makers concerning transgender issues.