Management Papers

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of this Version

12-2014

Publication Source

Strategic Management Journal

Volume

35

Issue

12

Start Page

1798

Last Page

1817

DOI

10.1002/smj.2183

Abstract

How does the relationship between founding team composition and venture performance depend on the venture's strategy and business environment? Using data from a novel survey of 2,067 firms, we show that while diverse founding teams tend to exhibit higher performance, this is not universally true. We find that founding teams that are diverse are likely to achieve high performance in a competitive commercialization environment. On the other hand, technically focused founding teams are aligned with a cooperative commercialization environment and when the enterprise pursues an innovation strategy. These results are robust to corrections for endogenous team formation concerns. The findings suggest that ventures cannot ignore founding team composition and expect to later professionalize their top management teams to align with their strategy and environment.

Copyright/Permission Statement

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: C.E. Eesley, D.H. Hsu & E.B. Roberts, (2014), "The Contingent Effects of Top Management Teams on Venture Performance: Aligning Founding Team Composition With Innovation Strategy and Commercialization Environment, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smj.2183. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving [http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html#terms].

Keywords

founding teams, entrepreneurship, venture performance

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Date Posted: 19 February 2018

This document has been peer reviewed.