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Let's explore with a divided team! The effects of top management team demographic faultlines on technological exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2019

Mengge Li Open the ORCID record for Mengge Li [Opens in a new window]  and
Kun (Carl) Liu
Mengge Li*
Affiliation:
Department of Marketing & Management, College of Business Administration, The University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Avenue, El Paso, TX 79968, USA
Kun (Carl) Liu
Affiliation:
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, College of Business Administration, Kent State University, 475 Terrace Drive, Kent, OH 44242, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Research on top management team (TMT) diversity suggests that diverse backgrounds improve technological exploration. However, this diversity may also cause demographic faultlines that break a team into subgroups and undermine team performance, and the status difference between CEO and top managers may change inter-subgroup dynamics. We predicted that TMT faultline had an inverted U-shape relationship with technological exploration. Further, we predicted that the effects of TMT faultline were more prominent when the CEO is in the minority subgroup than when the CEO was in the majority subgroup. Using a longitudinal sample from the US IT services industry, the results found that TMT faultline exhibited an inverted U-shape relationship with technological exploration only when the CEO was in the minority subgroup, and such relationship disappeared when the CEO was in the majority subgroup.

Keywords

top management teamCEOfaultlinesheterogeneityinnovationexploration
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 28 , Issue 6 , November 2022 , pp. 1181 - 1200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2019

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