Opening the Black Box of Upper Echelons in China: TMT attributes and Strategic Flexibility

Tang Wang; Dirk Libaers; Hao Jiao

doi:10.1111/jpim.12152

Opening the Black Box of Upper Echelons in China: TMT attributes and Strategic Flexibility

Tang Wang (Corresponding Author), Dirk Libaers, Hao Jiao^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Business Management

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)

5 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Many scholars have suggested that strategic flexibility is a critical firm capability to survive in today’s competitive arena. But, where does strategic flexibility come from? We examine the relationships between top management team’s socio-psychological attributes (shared vision, social integration and political ties) and strategic flexibility, which we decompose into organizational flexibility and technological flexibility. We further examine how the level of competitive intensity can moderate the relationships. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 227 firms from China. We find that organizational flexibility mediates the impact of TMT social integration and political ties on technological flexibility. Our results extend previous research by highlighting the importance of TMTs socio-psychological attributes in driving technological flexibility, through the mediating impact of organizational flexibility.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	685-703
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Product Innovation Management
Volume	32
Issue number	5
Early online date	24 Jan 2014
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12152
Publication status	Published - Sept 2015

Bibliographical note

The authors are indebted to JPIM editor Gloria Barczak and anonymous reviewers for their many helpful insights and suggestions in improving this paper. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant #71202029).

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Cite this

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title = "Opening the Black Box of Upper Echelons in China: TMT attributes and Strategic Flexibility",

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Opening the Black Box of Upper Echelons in China: TMT attributes and Strategic Flexibility

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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