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Top Management Teams

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Handbook of Top Management Teams

Abstract

Research on top management teams commenced in the organisations literature around 1980 (Bourgeois, 1980) and has been pervasive ever since (e.g., Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Carpenter et al., in press; Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven, 1990; Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996; Fredrickson and Iaquinto, 1989; Hambrick, 1981). In an effort to move beyond an examination of individual leaders, researchers have widened their focus to the constellation of executives who roughly comprise what Cyert and March (1963) called the ‘dominant coalition’. Most such research has attempted to examine the effects of top management team characteristics on organisational outcomes, on the assumption that the collective dispositions and interactions of top managers affect the major choices they make (Hambrick and Mason, 1984). This wave of research is an important advance for executive leadership theory because of its recognition that the management of an enterprise is typically a shared activity, extending beyond the chief executive. Although there are instances when top managers have limited discretion over organisational outcomes (Hambrick and Finkelstein, 1987), in most organisations no other small group has as much potential to affect the form or fate of the enterprise as does the top management team.

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Authors
  1. Donald C. Hambrick
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne Universités, Paris 2, France

    Frank Bournois (Professor of General Management and Leadership Development) & Jérôme Duval-Hamel (Professor and Co-Chairman of the Law and Business School) (Professor of General Management and Leadership Development) &  (Professor and Co-Chairman of the Law and Business School)

  2. EMLYON Business School, France

    Sylvie Roussillon (Professor in Leadership Development and Executive Coaching) (Professor in Leadership Development and Executive Coaching)

  3. Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, France

    Jean-Louis Scaringella (Deputy Director General) (Deputy Director General)

Copyright information

© 2010 Donald C. Hambrick

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Hambrick, D.C. (2010). Top Management Teams. In: Bournois, F., Duval-Hamel, J., Roussillon, S., Scaringella, JL. (eds) Handbook of Top Management Teams. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305335_2

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