Top Management Teams Hierarchical Structures : An Exploration of Multi-Level Determinants

Although strategic leadership researchers have started to focus on the role structure of top management teams (TMT), the hierarchical structure of TMTs still needs to be explored. In this study, we conduct an empirical analysis to understand better how TMTs are hierarchically structured and what drives different hierarchical configurations across TMTs. Our exploratory analysis of 260 Standard & Poor firms between 2007 and 2018 offers unique insights. Primarily, we find that several factors related to CEO characteristics, strategic leadership, firm and environmental conditions, and firm performance influence the hierarchical structure of TMTs. Moreover, we discover that even though TMT sizes remained constant between the years of observation, they became less hierarchical in structure, meaning that TMTs became relatively flatter. This combined empirical insights call for nuanced theoretical explanations of TMT hierarchical structures. We contribute to the TMT literature mainly by highlighting the development of different TMT hierarchical structures and providing new insights into their determinants