Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2011

Abstract

Investors of venture backed firms, seeking to increase knowledge diversity, cognitive conflict, professionalism and charisma within their top management teams (TMTs), tend to accelerate the turnover of executives within these teams, often resulting in multiple cohorts of tenure. Paradoxically, this search for increased professionalism and beneficial cognitive conflict results in heightened affective (or role based) conflict. Past studies have identified an inverse relationship between charisma and affective conflict, on one hand, and a positive relationship between tenure diversity and affective conflict, on the other hand. This study is the first to integrate these two relationships while simultaneously seeking to identify whether identity group formation mediates the direct effects of charisma and tenure diversity on the level of conflict across the spectrum of both high and low performing firms. We find that tenure identity group participation and TMT team identity group participation indeed mediate the effect of CEO charisma on conflict. We also find TMT identity group affiliation mediates the positive effect of tenure diversity on conflict in low performing teams.

Keywords

affective conflict, TMT conflict, social identity, perceived performance, transformational leadership

Rights

© The Author(s). Kelvin Smith Library provides access for non-commercial, personal, or research use only. All other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission is strictly prohibited.

Department/Center

Design & Innovation

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.