15 November 2010

Call for papers: Contextualizing Top Management Teams

A special issue of European Journal of International Management

Top managers are considered the most influential decision-makers for firms’ strategy and a large body of research presents evidence for executive effects in different settings. Yet only recently have researchers started to pay attention to the role of the social and environmental contexts in which top management teams (TMTs) are embedded. Top executives are often informed, influenced and sometimes constrained by others both inside and outside the organization. As a result, upper echelons face diverse challenges and opportunities when operating in a variety of different contexts. Contextual factors at the team, organizational, industry and country level are considered not only important determinants of executive composition but also moderating forces shaping the consequences of executive characteristics for firm strategy and performance. In addition, the extent to which top managers matter and exert an influence on their firms differ with national level institutional settings and there is an increased interest in the cross-national variation in executive effects.

This special issue aims to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the interplay between top management teams and different layers of context as well as the dynamic interactions between the contexts and firm strategies (such as international and business strategies). We encourage in particular new theoretical and empirical approaches that introduce a more European perspective.

Selected papers will be published from the 2011 Workshop on Top Management Teams & Business Strategy: Contextualizing TMTs, Istanbul, 31 March–1 April, 2011. At the same time, we also welcome submitted papers from authors from all over the world. We invite submissions that discuss implications for international management in Europe and beyond.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:
  • Literature reviews and state-of-the-art papers, which will encourage the debate about the role of context in top management team research and discuss theoretical and empirical challenges for future TMT research.
  • Conceptual papers focusing on the theme of the special issue. We particularly welcome papers that use an interdisciplinary approach and combine different theoretical perspectives to explain the impact of contextual factors on the antecedents and consequences of TMT strategic behavior.
  • Empirical papers contextualizing different TMT research topics, such as:
    - the role of social, organizational, national, global and environmental contexts on TMT motivational and cognitive bases
  • - TMT dynamics and behaviour;
    - interactions and power relations between TMT and other stakeholders
    - executive compensation, turnover and succession
Important Date
Final paper submission deadline: 31 July, 2011

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