Dissertation
Top management team dynamic postural flexibility: response to novel critical events
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Drexel University
Jun 2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00001623
Abstract
This study explores top management teams (TMT) within high-tech centric firms to assess dynamic features that affect decision making processes and considers other factors also influencing TMT choices during a severe crisis period. Data was gathered using single interviews that explored how TMTs navigated and made sense of a self-identified novel critical event of exogenous origin, that constituted a severe crisis for the firm. A total of 24 C-level executives were interviewed, representing 21 U.S. based firms that ranged in size from 70 to greater than 10,000 staff, where each participant had been in their role for at least 3 1/2 years. Constructivist grounded theory methods were used to analyze the data, that resulted in 30 focused codes describing TMT responses to crisis, 8 meta codes representing aggregated groups of similar activities, and 3 thematic groups that frame TMT activities. The findings provide insight into TMT considerations driving response choices, learning, evaluative assessing, and other factors that vary with time and influence TMT sensemaking and understanding, indicating modifiability of some TMT compositional features. It resulted in a Model of TMT Postural Flexibility, showing the relationship between grounded theory findings, and presents a new management team construct, TMT Postures, that represents grouped TMT compositional features as a dynamic collection. The findings demonstrate that in some crisis contexts, TMT Postures are flexible and modifiable, reflecting broader adaptive capacities of some TMTs for incorporating both new knowledge and adjusting other team compositional features to successfully manage firms through crisis conditions.
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Details
- Title
- Top management team dynamic postural flexibility
- Creators
- Kenneth Gregory Duncan
- Contributors
- Lauren D'Innocenzo (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- xii, 227 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Bennett S. LeBow College of Business; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991020668709004721