Tine Buyl

Top Management Team Functional Diversity and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of CEO Characteristics

Past research indicates that the effect of TMT functional diversity on firm performance is equivocal. We address this issue by focusing on the integrative role of the CEO, postulating that the CEOs expertise and background characteristics affect the TMT functional diversity–firm performance relationship, because of their impact on the exchange and integration of distributed knowledge within the TMT. Using a dataset of 33 Dutch and Belgian Information Technology firms we investigate the moderating role of three sets of CEO characteristics (functional background, status as founder, and shared experience with the other TMT members) on the relationship between TMT functional diversity and firm performance. Our results reveal that CEO and TMT characteristics do interact in realizing the potential advantages of distributed TMT functional expertise.

Top Management Team Members’ Decision Influence and Cooperative Behaviour: An Empirical Study in the Information Technology Industry

Organizational leadership is generally distributed between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the top management team (TMT) members. Building on this observation, we present an empirical investigation of the cues for CEOs to delegate decision‐making influence to particular TMT members. In the literature, explanations both based on expertise and driven by similarity are described. In this study, we reconcile both explanations by examining the moderating role of the TMTs level of ‘cooperative behaviour’ (collaboration and information exchange). We analyse when and in what circumstances TMT members’ expertise and similarity to the CEO regarding his/her functional background and/or locus‐of‐control predict their decision‐making influence. We postulate that TMT cooperative behaviour will advance the effect of expertise on TMT members’ decision influence but impede the effect of similarity to the CEO. Our hypotheses are tested on a data set of 135 TMT members from 32 Dutch and Belgian information technology firms. Overall, we find that our proposed research model is confirmed for technology‐oriented decisions. Furthermore, we draw exploratory conclusions about the effect of TMT cooperative behaviour on the systematic distribution of decision influence in TMTs.

CEO Narcissism, Risk-Taking, and Resilience: An Empirical Analysis in U.S. Commercial Banks

In this study, we investigate how CEO narcissism, in combination with corporate governance practices, impacts organizational risk-taking and how this in turn affects organizations’ resilience to environmental conditions. We examine these issues in the context of the recent collapse (systemic shock) of the U.S. banking industry in September 2008, using a sample of 92 CEOs from 2006 until 2014. We find that before the shock CEO narcissism positively affected the riskiness of banks’ policies, especially when compensation policies that encourage risk-taking (stock options) are in place. The positive effect of narcissism was dampened, however, when board monitoring was more effective (because of the presence of knowledgeable outsider directors). Furthermore, we find that these preshock features hamper organizations’ resilience to (economic) shocks, as banks led by more narcissistic CEOs before the September 2008 collapse experienced a slower recovery to preshock performance levels afterwards. This effect was partially mediated by banks’ preshock riskiness of policies. We attribute these effects to the associated depletion of the organizations’ internal resources (beyond slack). Post-hoc analyses further underscore this idea, showing that the U.S. government’s capital injections through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)—resolving the “problem” of resource depletion—moderated these effects.

What is the Impact of Seniority–Based Pay on Labor Productivity?

Prior research has suggested that seniority–based pay can induce both positive and negative effects on workforce productivity; positive by fostering individuals’ motivation and their commitment to ...

Unraveling the Impact of Workforce Age Diversity on Organizational Performance

Prior literature has put forward both positive and negative effects of age diversity on organizational performance. Using 3,888 Belgian organizational observations from 2008 to 2011, we unraveled these countervailing effects in two ways. First, we distinguished between two dimensions of age diversity: age variety and polarization. We found that age variety benefits performance by creating synergies among different sources of knowledge, whereas age polarization is an important source of affective conflict that harms performance. Second, we explored the moderating impact of two contextual contingencies: knowledge-intensity and human resource management (HRM). The effects of age variety and polarization appeared to be independent of the organization’s knowledge-intensity, but HRM did moderate the impact of age variety. In particular, we found that high-commitment management (HCM) reinforces the positive synergetic effects of age variety, but the negative effect of age polarization seems to be too strong to b...

TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM ATTENTION FOCUS ON EXPLORATION AND EXPLOITATION: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

In this study, we analyze the TMT’s attention focus on exploration and exploitation in a dynamic context. Building on the theory on organizational inertia, we propose that both attention focuses wi...