Mason A. Carpenter

Upper Echelons Research Revisited: Antecedents, Elements, and Consequences of Top Management Team Composition

This study reviews recent research building on Hambrick and Mason’s [Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9: 193–206] upper echelons (UE) perspective with the aim of identifying challenges and opportunities for future UE-based organizations research. Our review highlights a number of central facets of the UE perspective: It is at once a theoretical framework predicting that organizations will be a reflection of their top management teams and a methodology that relies on executive demography as a measurement proxy for underlying individual and group cognitions and behaviors. In proposing new research directions, we challenge organizations researchers to (1) reconsider the universality of the top management team (TMT) construct, (2) carefully explore the practical and theoretical meaning of TMT demographic characteristics vis-à-vis the deeper constructs they are presumed to proxy, (3) integrate other determinants of managerial cognition and behavior into UE theorizing, and (4) revisit the roles of causality and intertemporal dynamics among the antecedents, consequences, and composition of top management teams.

Internationalization and Firm Governance: The Roles of CEO Compensation, Top Team Composition, and Board Structure

Using the complementary lenses of information-processing and agency theories, this study tests the proposition that the complexity resulting from a firms degree of internationalization will be acc...

Bundling Human Capital with Organizational Context: The Impact of International Assignment Experience on Multinational Firm Performance and CEO Pay

We develop resource- and dynamic capability-based arguments that CEOs with international assignment experience create value for their firms and themselves through their control of a valuable, rare,...

Taking Stock of What We Know About Mergers and Acquisitions: A Review and Research Agenda

Scholars from multiple fields have shown increasing interest in the causes and consequences of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Although this proliferation of research has the potential to significantly improve our understanding of M&A activity, absent is the necessary step of consolidating and integrating extant knowledge. Accordingly, this article develops a framework to organize and review recent empirical findings, principally from management, economics, and finance in which interest in acquisition behavior is high but also from other areas that have tangentially explored acquisition activity such as accounting and sociology. This article identifies patterns and theoretical gaps and provides recommendations for future research aimed at developing a more integrated M&A research agenda for management scientists.

The Effects of Top Management Team Pay and Firm Internationalization on MNC Performance

We examine relationships among top management team (TMT) compensation, a firm’s degree of internationalization (DOI), and its subsequent levels of market and accounting performance. Consistent with our contingency view of information-processing theory, we find that non-CEO total pay and the use of long-term incentive pay are positively associated with subsequent performance, whereas the CEO–TMT total pay gap has negative effects on firm performance. CEO pay has no relationship with performance and TMT pay effects are much stronger in MNCs with high DOI.

Social Network Research in Organizational Contexts: A Systematic Review of Methodological Issues and Choices

A large body of research has examined social networks in organizational contexts. While this work has enhanced scholars’ understanding of the antecedents and consequences of networks, missing from this literature is a comprehensive framework that simplifies and clarifies this complex body of work. In response, the authors develop a framework that classifies network research into four major categories, with the purpose of guiding scholars’ choices among the various theories, constructs, measures, research designs, and analytic strategies inherent in the social network literature. The authors also provide recommendations for future work aimed at advancing the state of network research in organizational contexts.

International assignment experience at the top can make a bottom‐line difference

This article addresses the question of whether international assignment experience in the top management team makes a bottom-line difference. Based on the premise and observations that executive international assignment experience is rare, valuable, and hard to imitate, we suggest that in the right organizational context, it can create competitive advantage. The authors show how such experience can benefit companies and executives financially and discuss how companies can help ensure a supply of internationally seasoned candidates for future executive positions.

The Price of Change: The Role of CEO Compensation in Strategic Variation and Deviation From Industry Strategy Norms

This research tests the proposition that changes in CEO pay will be reflected in strategic change—viewed as variation in firm strategy and deviation from industry strategic norms. Changes in total CEO pay, long-term pay, and long-term pay structure were found to affect strategic change in a sample of large U.S. firms. However, the effects of pay on change were positive when firm performance was low; the relationships were negative among the highest performing firms.

RELATIONSHIPS AMONG CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP, SOCIAL NETWORK EXTENSIVENESS, AND SELF-SET CAREER GOALS: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA.

We develop a theoretical framework that links charismatic leadership to the extensiveness of ones social network and then predicts that such network extensiveness can subsequently be related to an...

Corporate Governance and Knowledge Management: How Board Independence May Increase CEO Paranoia, and Lead to Increased Top Management Team Homophily

What are the implications of changes in corporate governance for a firm’s ability to create and transfer knowledge? This study suggests that board changes ostensibly aimed at bolstering the monitoring role of governance may inadvertently, as a result of CEO social cognitions, undermine a firm’s knowledge management capabilities through increases in top management team (TMT) homophily. Our theory builds on the premise that the TMT is the information processing center of the firm in its relationship with the environment. We theorize how changes in board composition that increase the board’s social independence from CEOs may affect TMT member selection through symptoms of CEO non-clinical paranoia about their relations with the board. Our theory is tested with data from an original survey of CEOs and outside directors from 263 large- and medium-sized U.S. global corporations, together with archival data on board composition and management characteristics. We submit that CEOs manifesting non-clinical paranoia are more likely to appoint executives like themselves to the top team; and these new executives also have fewer ties to the board. Results suggest that social psychological cognitions among corporate leaders may lead to TMT homophily - that is, less diversity in top management teams, including diversity of social network ties. Such homophily has, in turn, been shown to stifle new knowledge creation, knowledge transfer, and ultimately, strategic change.