University of Groningen
Four decades of CEO–TMT interface research
Georgakakis, Dimitrios; Heyden, Mariano L. M.; Oehmichen, Jana D. R.; Ekanayake, Udari I.
K.
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Leadership Quarterly
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10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101354
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Georgakakis, D., Heyden, M. L. M., Oehmichen, J. D. R., & Ekanayake, U. I. K. (2019). Four decades of
CEO–TMT interface research: A review inspired by role theory.
Leadership Quarterly
, [101354].
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101354
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Full Length Article
Four decades of CEO–TMT interface research: A review inspired by
role theory
Dimitrios Georgakakis
a
, Mariano L.M. Heyden
b,
⁎
, Jana D.R. Oehmichen
c
, Udari I.K. Ekanayake
d
a
School of Management, Research Institute for International Management, University of St. Gallen, Dufourstrasse 40a, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland
b
Monash Business School, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Road (N7.32), Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
c
Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE Groningen, the Netherlands
d
Monash Business School, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Road (N5.15), Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 1 December 2018
Received in revised form 16 October 2019
Accepted 21 November 2019
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Chief Executive Officers
Top management teams
CEO-TMT interface
Role theory
Strategic leadership
The CEO-TMT interface, defined as the linkage and interaction between the CEO and other top managers, has re-
ceived increasing attention from scholars in different disciplines. This stream of research aims to unveil how CEOs
and other executives interact with one another, influence each other, and become involved in collective activities
that shape the fate of organizations. Yet, despite the burgeoning interest in this area, extant CEO-TMT research is
characterized by various and disconnected assumptions about the interfacing roles through which CEOs and TMTs
exercise strategic leadership. Drawing on role theory, we review extant CEO-TMT interface research in different
disciplines, and systematically organize the various CEO-TMT role assumptions into three role-theory specifica-
tions: functionalism, social-interactionism, and structuralism. In taking stock of the three role specifications, we
provide a critique of the strengths and boundaries of each, and chart directions toward an integrated ‘multi-
role’ understanding of the CEO-TMT interface in strategic leadership.
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction
A core stream in strategic leadership research concerns with the in-
fluence of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and their top management
teams (TMTs) on firm processes and outcomes (Finkelstein, Hambrick,
& Cannella, 2009; Klimoski & Koles, 2001). Scholars in this area recog-
nize that strategic leadership is a collective process characterized by
micro -level interactions between the CEO and other top managers
(Bromiley & Rau, 2016; Cannella & Holcomb, 2005; Simsek, Heavey, &
Fox, 2018). Such interactions shape how executives engage in collective
activities, like strategy formation, cooperative behavior (Buyl, Boone, &
Hendriks, 2014), and shared leadership development (Carmeli, Tishler,
&Edmondson,2012). Theorizing strategic leadership from a CEO-TMT
conceptual lens ther efore adds nuance, validity, and explanatory
power to this field of research (Buyl, Boone, Hendriks, & Matthyssens,
2011; Peterson, Smith, Martorana, & Owens, 2003). Yet, while the rele-
vance of the CEO-TMT interface has been recognized, the assumptions
that sch olars adopt to define the various roles through which CEOs
and other executives interdependently enact their strategic leadership
duties remain unclassified and disconnected. Classifying role
assumptions in CEO-TMT research is important, as roles or expected be-
havi ors of actors in a social system are foundational building-blocks
needed to specify interactions, associations, and interdependencies be-
tween them (Biddle, 1986; Raes,Heijltjes,Glunk,&Roe,2011). Advanc-
ing toward a comprehensive theory of the CEO-TMT interface is thus
hindered without first clarifying the role assumptions through which
scholars interpret the various CEO-TMT interrelations.
Indeed, the need to classify and integrate the various and discon-
nected role assumptions in CEO-TMT research becomes clear when con-
sidering the multidisciplinary nature of the strate gic leadership field
(Finkelstein et al., 2009). Studies on the CEO-TMT interface have gained
traction in various disciplines, notably strategic management (Carmeli
et al., 2012; Hambrick & Cannella, 2004; Simsek, 2007), organizational
behavior, leadership and psychology (Lin & Rababah, 2014; Peterson
et al., 2003), corporate governance (Cruz, Gómez-Mejia, & Becerra,
2010; Krause, Priem, & Love, 2015; Zorn, Shropshire, Martin, Combs, &
Ketchen, 2017), sociology (Pernell, Jung, & Dobbin, 2017; Zorn, 2004),
economics (Hermalin & Weisbach, 1998), as well as accounting and fi-
nance (
Arena, Ferris, & Unlu, 2011). Due to the various areas of focus,
scholars within and across discip lines have adopted a variety of as-
sumptions about the roles through which CEOs and other executives ex-
ercise strategic leadership – impeding knowledge accumulation, and
making this field of research fragmented (Cannella & Holcomb, 2005).
Given that behaviors and interactions depart from the roles and “posi-
tions that actors hold in their organizations” (Raes et al., 2011,p.107),
The Leadership Quarterly xxx (xxxx) xxx
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: dimitrios.georgakakis@unisg.ch (D. Georgakakis),
pitosh.heyden@monash.edu (M.L.M. Heyden), j.d.r.oehmichen@rug.nl (J.D.R. Oehmichen)
, udari.ekanayake1@monash.edu (U.I.K. Ekanayake).
LEAQUA-101354; No of Pages 13
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101354
1048-9843/© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Leadership Quarterly
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua
Please cite this article as: D. Georgakakis, M.L.M. Heyden, J.D.R. Oehmichen, et al., Four decades of CEO–TMT interface research: A review inspired
by role theory, The Leadership Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101354
understanding the interactions between the CEO and other top man-
agers requires – at first – a systematic grasp of the interrelated roles
these actors play as members of the executive group (Cannella &
Holcomb, 2005; Hambrick, 1995).
Given the importance of ‘roles’ in understanding interpersonal
interactions in leader-member associations (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000;
Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), we draw on role theory to advance a
conceptually-informed review on four decades of CEO-TMT interface re-
search in several disciplines. Our aim is to systematically classify the
various CEO-TMT role assumptions used in the extant literature, and
set an agenda for integration. Role theory has emerged as a conceptual
lens to unveil how interactive processes among members (often called
‘actors’) of a social system occur to shape group-level decisions and ac-
tions (Biddle, 2013). Such interactive processes unfold through the de-
velopment of “roles”, and these roles, in turn, define dyadic or group-
level patterns of behavior (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Given that strategic
leadership is a collective activity (Simsek et al., 2018), characterized by
micro-level interactive processes between the CEO and other top man-
agers (Bromiley & Rau, 2016; Cannella & Holcomb, 2005), the applica-
tion of role theory can help to systematically classify the different role
assumptions used in conceptualizing th e CEO-TMT interface. Since
“roles” and “role expectations” define the boundaries and interdepen-
dence of actors operating in the same social system (Biddle, 2013), es-
tablishing a systematic grasp of the various roles that CEOs and other
top managers play in the dominant coalition is central for the develop-
ment of this area of research (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000; Cannella &
Holcomb, 2005).
According to Biddle (1986, 2013), there are three pertinent streams
of thought on the scope and content of roles that individuals enact in a
social system: (a) func tionalism,(b)social-i nteractionism,and
(c) structuralism. To systematically cl arify the assumptions about the
various roles through which CEOs and other executives interactively
enact strategic leadership, we review extant CEO-TMT research across
several disciplines, and reorganize the CEO-TMT literature into the
three role-theory specifications. This results in the development of
three CEO-TMT role perspectives: (a) the “CEO
-TMT functionalism per-
spective” which defines role interdependence based on executives' for-
mal functional titles and complementarity (e.g., Hambrick & Cannella,
2004; Menz, 2012), (b) the “CEO-TMT social-interactionism perspective”
which focuses on the micro-level leadership, behavioral and cognitive
processes through which CEO- TMT roles are socially-constructed
(Bromiley & Rau, 2016; Carmeli, Schaubroeck, & Tishler, 2011), a nd
(c) the “CEO-TMT structuralism perspective” which focuses on the roles
of power and structure through which CEOs and other executives im-
pact organizations (Busenbark, Krause, Boivie, & Graffin, 2016; Shen &
Cannella, 2002a).
Our review demonstrates that each role perspective contributes to
knowledge about the CEO-TMT interface from a differen t angle, and
predominantly appears in different disciplines. Specifically, the social-
interactionism CEO-TMT perspective informs our understanding of the
micro-level behavioral and leadership processes through which CEOs
and other executives interact — by often posi tioning the CEO as the
leader of the group who impacts team dynamics through his/her leader-
ship style, charisma, and other behavioral attributes. This role-
specification is predominant in the fields of Organizational Behavior,
Leadership, and Psychology where the CEO-TMT micro-level behavioral
processes are of central interest. Further, the functionalist CEO-TMT per-
spective contributes to knowledge about the roles of executives based
on their predetermined functional titles. From this perspective, func-
tional roles are used to define CEO-TMT role expectations, complemen-
tarity and interdependence. Functionalist role assumptions appear to be
pertinent in the fields of Strategic Management, as well as in Marketing,
Information Systems, and in the discipline of Sociology where the roles
of functional top managers are of central interest. Finally, the structural-
ism CEO-TMT perspective informs our understanding of the role of
power-differentials between the CEO and the TMT, and contributes to
knowledge about how power contests and agentic behavior is emerging
as a result of the CEO-TMT interaction. This specification is predominant
in the areas of Corporate Governance, Economics and Finance, as well as
in field of Strategic Management where the “agency” role of executives
is highlighted.
Given that CEOs and executives simultaneously perfor m multiple
roles in exercising strategic leadership (Cannella & Holcomb, 2005),
we consider the functionalist, social-interactionism and structuralism
roles as co-existing (Biddle, 1986, 2013), arguing that their integration
can help advance toward a multi-role understanding of the CEO-TMT
interface in strategic leadership (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000). In an overall
synthesis, we therefore identify the strengths and boundaries of each
of the three CEO-TMT role-perspectives and offer an agenda for integra-
tion. Indeed, as early as 2005, Cannella and Holcomb underscored the
importance to clarify the various ‘roles’ that CEOs and other executives
play in the firm's dominant coalition in order to ultimately determine
whether unitary processes at the team-level occur, and if they occur,
how they impact organizations. Beyond classifying existing CEO-TMT
research into the three role perspectives, we thus also provide a critique
of the strengths and boundaries of each, and lay out suggestions on how
future research can move toward an integrated, multi-role theorizing of
the CEO-TMT interface in strategic leadership.
Conceptual developments in CEO-TMT research
Strategic leadership is a shared activity among actors inhabiting the
senior-most organizational ranks (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000). Studies in
this area have mainly subscribed to the upper echelons perspective
(Hambrick, 2007), which implies that organizational actions and out-
comes reflect the values, beliefs and personal givens of the firm's dom-
inant coalition – that is, of the core group of top managers (Hambrick &
Mason, 1984). Rooted in the behavioral theory of the firm, the upper
echelons model originally assumed that strategic leadership is ‘unitarily’
exercised by the entire group of executives (for reviews, see e.g. Boal &
Hooijberg, 2000; Carpenter, Geletkanycz, & Sanders, 2004; Hambrick,
2007; Nielsen, 2010). Following this premise, early studies examined
the effect of the TMT as a ‘unitary-whole’ by testing the influence of
the ‘aggregated’ group of executives (including the CEO) on firm pro-
cesses and outcomes (Carpenter et al., 2004). While research on the ag-
gregated effect of top managers has been informative, it inherently
assumes that the CEO has an equally powerful and influential role as
other executive team members – thereby neglecting the reality that in-
dividuals in groups have different roles to perform, as well as different
influence on strategic decisions (Cannella & Holcomb, 2005). Indeed, a
decade after the introduction of the upper echelons model, Hambrick
(1994) stressed the importance to consider the dif ferent roles that
CEOs and other executives have as members of the dominant coalition,
by stating:
“Perhaps out of a zeal to move away from undue focus on the single
top executive, researchers of top groups have been noticeably silent
on the distinct role and impact of the group leader. […] Yet, everyday
observation and a wealth of related literature indicates that the top
group leader has a disproportionate, sometimes nearly dominating
influence on the group's various characteristics and output.”
Following this premise, scholars across disciplines have increasingly
started to recognize the importance of considering the different, yet in-
teractive roles, that the CEO and other executives play in strategic lead-
ership (Bromiley & Rau, 2016; Cannella & Holcomb, 2005; Klimoski &
Koles, 2001). Unpacking the distinct and interactive roles of strategic
leaders acknowledges the increasing impact of CEOs on organizations,
their members, and the broader societies in which they operate
(e.g., Busenbark et al., 2016). At the same time, it embraces the reality
that “the complexity of creating and carrying out the strategic decisions
[…] demands more skill and effort than a single leader [i.e., the CEO
D. Georgakakis, M.L.M. Heyden, J.D.R. Oehmichen et al. The Leadership Quarterly xxx (xxxx) xxx
2
alone] can effectively provide” (Colbert, Barrick, & Bradley, 2014,
p. 351). Thus, instead of looking at the top management team as a uni-
tary entity, or at the ‘CEO effect’ in isolation, research into the CEO-TMT
interface is centered on the common role-specific boundaries, and inter-
actions through which CEOs and other top managers interface to impact
organizations.
On this basis, recent reviews and conceptual developments in this
area have emerged. Bromiley and Rau (2016), for example, highlighted
the interfacing social, behavioral, and cognitive processes characterizing
CEO-TMT interactions. In addition, Menz (2012) defined the role of
functional top managers, partially touching upon their effects on CEOs.
In their conceptual review, Busenbark et al. (2016) advanced a configu-
rational CEO perspective, hig hlighting the construct of CEO power
which is influenced by the notions of “person”, “position” and “environ-
ment”. These recent developments jointly demonstrate that theorizing
about the CEO-TMT interaction is a versatile endeavor, where ‘roles’
are assumed differently in each of these rec ently published reviews
and conceptualizations. For example, Menz's review emphasizes func-
tional titles in defining roles, inherently looking at the CEO-TMT interac-
tion from a “functionalist role” viewpoint. By emphasizing the cognitive,
social and behavioral processes, Bromiley and Rau inherently consid-
ered roles in the exec utive group as determined through social
interactionism. In their CEO configurational perspective, Busenbark
and colleagues highlight the role of the power-structure through
which the CEO enacts his/her agentic duties, thereby emphasizing role
assumptions related to structuration and CEO power vis-à-vis other
TMT members.
After considering these recent conceptual developments in parallel
with role theory specifications, it becomes apparent that th ere is a
need to reflect on and systematically classify the various CEO-T MT
role assumptions that scholars adopt in conceptualizing and examining
the interaction between the CEO and other TMT members. By drawing
on role theory (Biddle, 2013) our study provides a theory-informed clas-
sification of the various CEO-TMT role assumptions undertaken by
scholars within and across disciplines – and thereby helps us to system-
atically appreciate the complex nature of the CEO-TMT role interface and
its effects.
Role theory specifications
Role theory implies that individuals behave in accordance with the
functional, re lational, and structural fea tures of the social unit in
which they co-exist (Biddle, 2013; Katz & Kahn, 1978). As Biddle
(1986: 67) asserted, “role theory concerns one of the most important
features of social life, characteristic behavior patterns or roles. It ex-
plains roles by presuming that persons are members of social positions
and hold expectations for their own behaviors and those of other per-
sons.” As a conceptual lens, role theory has therefore helped scholars
to systematically organize their assumptions with regard to how roles
of individuals in groups are assumed and evolve to shape interpersonal
interactions (Biddle, 2013). In an early study, Graen (1976: 1201)
highlighted the thesis that “organizational members accomplish their
work through roles ”, and that role enactment ac ts as a means to set
team-level processes.
Early work in organizational leadership, for example, subscribed to
role theory to describe how roles are set and evolve between leaders
and team members (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), stressing that role-
specific expectations are formed via leader-member multidirectional
processes (Dienesch & Liden, 1986). In this regard, role theory specifies
that the boundaries of action, and interaction, among members of a
common social system are defined via processes of role allocation and
interdependence (Biddle, 2013; Sieber, 1974). This aspect highlighted
in role theory becomes prominent when considering that CEOs and ex-
ecutives have multiple, and often overlapping roles to simultaneously
enact when exercising thei r strategic leadership duties (Cannella &
Holcomb, 2005). Since CEOs are bounded-rational actors (Hambrick &
Mason, 1984), their decisions are influenced by other executives, and
by the roles these executives are expected to play in the dominant coa-
lition (Cannella & Holcomb, 2005).
According to Biddle (1986 ), there are three dominant streams of
thought in role theory: (a) functionalism, (b) social interactionism,
and (c) structuralism. First, the functionalism perspective suggests that
roles in a social system are static and predetermined by the functional
titles of individuals (Bates & Harvey, 1975). The key premise is that,
what an individual is expected to do (i.e., his or her scope and bound-
aries of action) is determined by the formal position or functional role
he or she has within the social system. With regard to the CEO-TMT in-
terface, for example, the roles of individuals in the TMT's social system
are mainly assumed based on the functional titles they possess (for ex-
ample, CFO or COO) (Menz, 2012). Second, the social interactionism per-
spective assumes that roles are socially determined and evolving based
on iterative relational processes among actors in a social system (Biddle,
1986; Raes et al., 2011). In contrast to the functionalism perspective,
social-in teractionism focuses on the dynamic formation of roles by
looking at the relational aspects such as emotions, motivation, trust,
and identity (Stryker & Serpe, 1982). For example, from a CEO-TMT in-
terface point of view, social-interactionist roles are not pre-speci
fied,
but evolving and socially negotiated based on the leadership style, and
behavior of the group's leader (i.e., the CEO) – as well as the social ex-
pectations and responses of other top managers.
Third, in contrast with the social-interactionism and the functional-
ism role conceptualizations, the structuralism perspective assumes that
roles are not harmoniously defined. Instead, structural and power dif-
ferentials among actors define the roles of members in the social system
(Bates & Harvey, 1975; Biddle, 1986). From a CEO-TMT interface point
of view, for example, structuralism assumptions emphasize how
power and structural differences determine how CEOs and other top
managers assume and respond to agency-based relations. Building on
these insights from role theory, we next provide a detailed description
of the methodology of our review, followed by a classification of CEO-
TMT studies into the three role-specifications.
Review of research on the CEO-TMT interface (1984–2018)
To identify relevant CEO-TMT research, we set the review's starting
point from 1984, the year that Hambrick & Mason published their
upper echelons model, and reviewed all empirical and conceptual stud-
ies through to 2018. In line with the recommendations of prior work
that good reviews focus on a wide array of journals in different disci-
plines (Short, 2009), we scope our review to include the top 50 journals
(based on their five-year Impact Factor) as indicated in the Thomson
Reuter's Web of Science Journal Citation Report 2018 in each of the fol-
lowing disciplines: Business, Management, Accounting & Finance, Psy-
chology, Economics, and Sociology. Similar selection approaches of
disciplinary c ategories have been used by prior multidisciplinary re-
views (e.g., Devers, Cannella, Reilly, & Yoder, 2007). We d ecided to
focus on the Web of Science report as it p rovides a direct ran king of
journals in each discipline based on the five-year average impact factor
(Menz, 2012). The five-year average impact factor allows us to consider
journals that are consistently ranked as the top 50 in their respective
field.
To gather relevant articles, we conducted a keyword search on the
EBSCO-host database and a Google Scholar Search for each journal
using the keywords: top management, top manager*, chief executive*,
CEO, TMT, and board of directors. Then, we searched all resulting papers
that included these keywords to find empirical and conceptual studies
that tested at least one hypothesis, or built a proposition around the
CEO-TMT interface. In our selection, we did not include past literature
reviews to avoid the accumulation of arguments that may result from
studies that consider and review common literature (as we do in this
study). Instead, we consider some central past reviews in the strategic
leadership field (e.g., Bromiley and Rau (2016); Busenbark et al.,
D. Georgakakis, M.L.M. Heyden, J.D.R. Oehmichen et al. The Leadership Quarterly xxx (xxxx) xxx
3
2016; Menz, 2012; Nielsen, 2010) in our conceptual development (as
described in the previous section). In line with Klimoski and Koles
(2001), studies on the CEO-TMT interface were defined as those that
had at least one of the following four elements: (a) directly explored
the linkage between the CEO and the TMT, (b) examined CEO-TMT in-
teraction (moderating) or intervening (mediating) effects on firm out-
comes, (c) developed hypotheses or propositions about the distinct
effects of CEOs and TMTs with an emphasis on their role interrelations,
and/or (d) examined the role of CEOs in relation to executive directors.
Since the notion of board independence varies across contexts and does
not necessarily reflect executive board memberships, we limited our
focus to papers that explicitly highlighted the role of “executive” direc-
tors and their interaction with the CEO. Our search resulted in 192 stud-
ies spanning from 1985 to 2018 (Appendix A).
Subsequently, drawing on role theory and the criteria provided in
the Table 1, we qualitatively assessed each study's primary focus and
classified studies into their predominant ro le-theory specification s:
functionalism, social-interactionism,orstructuralism.Toensureinternal
consis tency, two raters separ ately asses sed all CEO-TMT studies and
classified them into one predominant role specification based on each
study's primary focus. The overall inter-rater agreement was at 87%, in-
dicating high levels of consistency. For the 13% of cases where the raters
disagreed, co llective discussion between authors determined paper-
allocation to predominant role-specifications. Further, we also assessed
studies that cut-through role-specific boundaries. Specifically, as a sec-
ond step, the two coders considered again all studies to assess those
that used an additional role specification in parallel with their predom-
inant focus – and coded this additional (supporting) role specification
for each study separately. The intercoder agreement was at 97%, indicat-
ing internal consistency. For the 3% of disagreed cases, collective discus-
sions between authors again determined the allocation of
supplementary role specifications ( Appendix A).
A functionalism perspective on the CEO-TMT interface
As shown in Table 1, CEO-TMT studies categorized in the functional-
ism perspective have considered the role of the CEO and other func-
tional top managers based on their functional titles (e.g., CFOs and
COOs etc.), or focus on the experience complementarity and functional
interdependence between the CEO and other executives. From th is
viewp oint, the CEO and other executives have separate functions in
the executive group (Hambrick & Cannella, 2004) – and their interde-
pendence is defined on the basis of functional arrangements, or comple-
mentarity (Hambrick, Humphrey, & Gupta, 2015). As can be seen in
Fig. 1
, constructs that have been frequently assessed are functional ex-
perience/expertise, complementarity, functional titles, and CEO-TMT
managerial interdependence. This perspective has also placed attention
on contextual factors (e.g., environmental uncertainty, or job demands),
and often considers the effects of executives on organizational
performance.
The CEO-TMT linkage from a functionalism perspective
In a conceptual review on functional executives, Menz (2012, p. 71)
stated that “TMT members' roles are typically defined a priori (e.g., by
the CEO) […] before selecting a suitable individual executive”.From
this statement, it becomes clear that, from a functionalism role specifi-
cation, executives' role expectations are set and ‘predetermined’ accord-
ing to formal functional titles, as well as their experience-
complementarity with the CEO.
Studies in this area have considered the key influence of various
CEO-Functional executive duos, such as the CEO-COO (Hambrick &
Cannella, 2004), the CEO-CFO (Shi, Zhang, & Hoskisson, 2019), and the
CEO-CIO (Feeny, Edwards, & Simpson, 1992) dyadic interactions. For ex-
ample, Hambrick and Cannella examined the factors that drive CEOs to
employ executives who are responsible for the everyday operations of
the organization (i.e., COOs). They found that COOs are more likely to
be employed by firms where CEOs lack knowledge about the everyday
internal processes of the organization. In such conditions, the COO's
role is to take c are of the everyday operational aspects of the firm,
while the CEO's role relates to the broader strategic direction of the
organization.
Building on Hambrick and Cannella (2004), Zhang (2006) further
found that the presence of a COO is more likely to result in more strate-
gic change and higher performance in situations under which the CEO
and the TMT lacks firm specific knowledge. Under low perf ormance
conditions, however, COOs are likely to act as contenders and challenge
the CEO's retention at the helm of the organization. This study informed
the functionalist perspective by integrating elements with regard to the
notions of power and structuration. More recently, Marcel (2009) con-
firmed the assumption that the COO has a distinct functional role to per-
form in the TMT, and argued that only under conditions of
complementarity and high information processing de mands, c an a
firm benefit from having a CEO-COO duo. The authors suggested that
in order to adequately appreciate the CEO-COO dyadic relationship, re-
search should consider how interpersonal CEO-COO interactions evolve
via relational processes.
Another promising concept associated with the functionalist CEO-
TMT perspective is the notion of managerial interdependence, defined
after consideration of pre-established functional arrangements. In a re-
cent study, Hambrick et al. (2015) stressed that when the TMT consists
mainly of executive vice presidents (rather than general managers or
heads of divisions) the CEO-TMT horizontal interdependence is high.
They defined the notion of horizontal interdependence as “the degree
to which roles are arranged such that actions and effectiveness of
peers affect each other” (
Hambrick et al., 2015, p. 451). To mea sure
role interdependence, the authors considered the presence of functional
top managers, which is aligned with the principle that the functional
structure of the TMT defines how executives interact with one another.
With regard to the notion of complementarity and interdependence,
Carpenter, Sanders, and Gregersen (2001) assessed how international
experience of CEOs impact organizations . The authors found that
when the CEO has international knowledge, and this knowledge is bun-
dled with TMT members' international assignment experience, the per-
formance of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) increases.
Table 1
Linking CEO-TMT interface with role-theory specifications.
Functionalism Social-interactionism Structuralism
Principles - Roles are “static” and “a priori” determined based on
formal functional titles or experiences.
- Roles are relationally constructed,
socially negotiated and evolving.
- Roles are structurally determined by the rela-
tive distribution of power in the group.
Emphasis - Emphasis either on the dyadic relationships of the CEO
with functional top managers or on the CEO-TMT func-
tional interdependence and complementarity.
- Emphasis on the leadership style or
personality of the CEO, and the
social response of other executives.
- Emphasis on the agency-based features and
power differentials between the CEO and the
rest of the TMT.
Study
classification
criteria
- Studies with a primary focus on: (a) functional titles; or
(b) CEO-TMT functional interdependence or
complementarity.
- Studies with a primary focus on the
CEO-TMT micro relational processes.
- Studies with a primary focus on the power dif-
ferentials between the CEO and the TMT,
agency relations and governance outcomes.
D. Georgakakis, M.L.M. Heyden, J.D.R. Oehmichen et al. The Leadership Quarterly xxx (xxxx) xxx
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