Call for papers

Top managers are considered the most influential actors in the firm’s strategic behavior and a large body of research presents evidence for the effects of executives and executive teams on organizational outcomes. Nevertheless, recently more and more scholars acknowledge that this influential role is not equal for all executives or top managers at all times. TMTs do not always work as ‘teams’ in which every member participates in decision-making in the same way, but might rather be seen as a group of loosely coupled individuals, in which some executives will be more influential in particular situations. Furthermore, other organizational actors, such as board members or middle managers, might also become principal decision-makers in some circumstances or contexts.

Several scholars explicitly account for these issues. For instance, a growing body of research investigates the interrelations of members of TMTs – e.g., by studying intra-team processes such as behavioral integration – or by exploring the composition of TMTs in more depth – e.g., integrating concepts such as ‘faultlines’ from literature on work teams. Other scholars specifically focus on the CEO and the interface between the CEO and the TMT, recognizing the unique and decisive role of the CEO as a leader of both the TMT and the organization. Yet another stream of research concentrates on the relations of the CEO and the TMT with other actors, such as board members, middle managers, or external experts. Finally, scholars have argued that who plays the most influential role in strategic decision-making might depend on contextual factors, such as (national) culture, institutional pressures, industry dynamics, etc.

The objectives of this workshop are threefold:

To analyze the state-of-the-art on Top Management Teams & Business Strategy Research, paying special attention to the focal actors in organizational decision-making and their interrelations.
To devise the future avenues for research on this topic.
To generate opportunities for cross-border collaboration between TMT researchers.

We are interested in original studies that explore the impact of CEOs, top managers, and other principal decision-makers on organizational outcomes. We particularly incite the submission of papers that fall into one of the following domains:

State-of-the-art literature reviews, which encourage the debate about the role of different focal actors and their interrelations in organizational decision-making and discuss theoretical and empirical challenges for future TMT research.
Conceptual papers that combine different and novel theoretical perspectives to explain the behavior and interplay of CEOs, TMT members, and other decision-makers in affecting organizational outcomes.
Empirical papers dealing with issues related to the workshop’s theme,such as: the CEO-TMT interface; CEOs’ delegation of decision influence; interactions and power relations between TMT members and other influential actors; TMT processes such as behavioral integration; issues related to the TMT’s composition, such as faultlines or interdependence of TMT members; the role of contextual factors in executive decision-making; etc.

Deadlines

Deadline for research proposals: November 28th, 2014
Notification: as of December 15th, 2014
Registration of participants: February 13th, 2015
Deadline for full paper submission: February 26th, 2015

Submission guidelines

To submit a proposal, go the following website: http://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=1089

The submission should contain a cover page and an abstract/body of the proposal (in one single document).

The cover page must include:

The title of the proposal
Authors’ names, affiliations, address, telephone and e-mail

The body of the proposal should contain an abstract of max. 2 pages (cover page not included). Proposals must be single-spaced, font size 12. The abstract should clearly highlight the following issues: research gap, theories used, research method, and contribution of the research.