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Charas PhD Dissertation 030714.pdf (9.46 MB)

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DOES UPPER ECHELONS TEAM DYNAMIC MATTER? THE CRITICALITY OF EXECUTIVE TEAM BEHAVIOR IN ECONOMIC VALUE CREATION

Charas, Solange
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1395319255

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Management.
For 150 years, scholars and practitioners have been studying the relationship between the leaders of an organization and the performance of their firm, but despite this extensive research, there are few sure prescriptions for success. A recent survey revealed that 90% of board directors believe their personal performance is exemplary, but only 30% of directors feel the performance of their board as a whole is exemplary (Heidrick & Struggles, 2010). Equally disturbing is that 85% of directors believe the biggest weakness of their CEO is the ability to effectively lead teams and generate results (Larcker & Miles, 2013). My dissertation research explored this gap between individual and team performance at the board and C-Suite levels and further explored the impact of team dynamic quality on financial performance. We focused on the upper echelons of the organization as this level is has been shown to have a significant impact on firm outcomes (Hambrick, 2007). The dissertation describes four phases of research. In the first study, we interviewed 23 directors of public companies and looked at governance data from a third-party source to explore the relationship between team dynamic quality in the boardroom and governance quality of the firm. The second and third studies were quantitative and attempted to assess the quality of team dynamic in the boardroom and C-Suite to understand the role of team dynamic in explaining an organization’s ability to out-perform its competitors. Our second study analyzed input from 182 board directors, the majority of whom served on publicly-traded companies. Our third study analyzed input from 123 C-Suite executives of publicly traded organizations. Our research showed that the quality of board team dynamic can explain 4% of corporate profitability, and the quality of C-Suite team dynamic can explain 20% of corporate profitability. We also found a leveraged effect of team outcomes on financial performance for both samples, with board teams having an eight-times greater predictive power for financial performance than individual directors and C-Suite teams having a four-times greater predictive power for financial performance than individual executives. The final phase of inquiry focused on the 36 organizations from which data for both the board and the C-Suite were reported. From this analysis, we found that if the C-Suite team dynamic was healthy, the quality of the board team dynamic was irrelevant in explaining the organization’s ability to out-perform its competitors.
Tony Lingham, PhD (Committee Chair)
Kalle Lyytinen, PhD (Committee Member)
David Cooperrider, PhD (Committee Member)
Richard Leblanc, PhD (Committee Member)
241 p.
Management
Board directors; Top Management Team; TMT; upper echelon theory; team theory; team dynamic; multiple team membership; cultural intelligence; corporate financial performance; information asymmetry

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Charas, S. (2014). DOES UPPER ECHELONS TEAM DYNAMIC MATTER? THE CRITICALITY OF EXECUTIVE TEAM BEHAVIOR IN ECONOMIC VALUE CREATION [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1395319255

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Charas, Solange. DOES UPPER ECHELONS TEAM DYNAMIC MATTER? THE CRITICALITY OF EXECUTIVE TEAM BEHAVIOR IN ECONOMIC VALUE CREATION. 2014. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1395319255.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Charas, Solange. "DOES UPPER ECHELONS TEAM DYNAMIC MATTER? THE CRITICALITY OF EXECUTIVE TEAM BEHAVIOR IN ECONOMIC VALUE CREATION." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1395319255

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1395319255
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© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.