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The personality factor: how top management teams make decisions. A literature review

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Abstract

Past research has increasingly suggested that CEO/TMT personality can play a relevant role in influencing various external (e.g. firm performance) and internal (e.g. firm organizational structure) management outcomes. These promising results need appropriate systematization and discussion, which we aim at providing through a literature review based on rigorous inclusion/exclusion criteria. Our analysis shows great heterogeneity in regard to both the personality traits and the personality based management outcomes explored by the investigated population of studies. Thus, we specifically use the framework provided by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality to codify the publications and this framework allows us to identify some possible theoretical trajectories. These trajectories mainly regard the empirical testing of the highlighted associations between CEO emotional stability, extraversion and conscientiousness with bureaucratization, strategic pro-activity and firm performance. Our article is primarily intended for those scholars and practitioners who want to improve their knowledge about psychology-based decision making and behavioural corporate governance through the understanding of how CEO/TMT personality can affect their strategic decisions.

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Notes

  1. Some introductory remarks about the concepts of TMT and TMT members can be helpful to the scope of this review. First, while TMT members have been lato sensu associated with top executives, what kinds of top executives have to be stricto sensu considered as TMT members has received various, but not always convergent, interpretations by the evolving literature. In fact, TMT members have been identified, at least, as: i) executives above the vice-president level (e.g. Chaganti and Sambharya, 1987; Hambrick et al. 1996; Michel and Hambrick 1992; Murray 1989); ii) inside directors (e.g. Finkelstein and Hambrick 1990); iii) dominant coalitions (Hambrick and Mason 1984). In this article we adopt the third conceptualization, which is the widest among those highlighted in this note. In particular, we consider, as TMT members, all those people who have “strategic” responsibilities within firms, such as: CEOs, CFOs, COOs, board chairpersons, other board members or specific top managers outside boards. Second, we have to point out that some articles within our dataset use the term “board of directors” rather than that of “TMT”. Although we acknowledge that minor differences exist between the concepts under lied by these terms, we consider these differences as not relevant to the aims of this research. Thus, we attribute the same meaning to both these concepts, which, with no distinction, we label as TMTs to reflect the terminology used within most of the studies in the research dataset.

  2. Also known as “Big Five”.

  3. The asterisk at the end of a search word allowed for different suffixes (e.g. personality or personalities).

  4. The list of the dataset references is at the end of this article. Also, we provide readers with the in-depth content analysis of the dataset as supplementary material (Online Resource).

  5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion. Furthermore, we provide readers with the full list of our primary personality variables, their specific association with FFM factors and the reliability of their assessment instruments, as supplementary material (Online Resource).

  6. Together with the relationship between personality traits and management outcomes, we found that some articles also investigate broader topics, such as the relationship between TMT socio-demographic features or environmental characteristics and strategy (e.g. Boone and van Witteloostuijn 1996; Papadakis and Bourantas 1998). In these cases, we strictly took into account the personality-based relationships only.

  7. However, Papadakis and Bourantas evidence that the structural and environmental context is, in general, more influential than the CEO personality, except for new product introductions.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Roberto Cafferata, Stefano Ferracuti, two anonymous referees, and the Editor Roberto di Pietra for their insightful comments and valuable suggestions around the development of this research project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Studies, School of Economics, Tor Vergata University, Via Columbia 2, 00133, Rome, Italy

    Gianpaolo Abatecola & Sara Poggesi

  2. Department of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Sensory Organs, School of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University, Via di Grottarossa 1035, 00189, Rome, Italy

    Gabriele Mandarelli

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  1. Gianpaolo Abatecola
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Correspondence to Gianpaolo Abatecola.

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Abatecola, G., Mandarelli, G. & Poggesi, S. The personality factor: how top management teams make decisions. A literature review. J Manag Gov 17, 1073–1100 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-011-9189-y

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