Strategic consensus, top management teams, and innovation performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the educational level and diversity of a firm's top management team (TMT), moderated by strategic consensus, influence its innovation performance. Design/methodology/approach – Using Poisson regression analysis, the proposed models were tested on 97 innovative Spanish firms selected from the Dun and Bradstreet database of 2000. Findings – Results show that a higher educational level in the TMT has a positive and direct effect on innovation performance, while functional diversity and diversity in TMT tenure have a direct and negative effect. However, in a situation of strategic consensus in the TMT, the relationship between functional diversity and innovation is positive. Originality/value – The paper makes several contributions to previous research. First, few studies have considered the influence of the characteristics and composition of the TMT on the organization's innovation performance. Second, this paper responds to the calls of researchers to enrich the upper echelon theory by considering strategic consensus as a process of interaction between the members of the TMT that modifies the relationship between TMT diversity and the firm's innovation performance.