Team Interdependence Of The Senior Management Team Process And Performance

Top management teams (TMTs) have long been studied as an important determinant of corporate success. In fact, an article sums up the state of TMT heterogeneity research by stating that"researches on heterogeneities are imperfect and being prone to errors"; another article sums up the state of TMT process research by stating that"researchers have not gained a good understanding of the nature of TMT process". The purpose of this study was to find the relationships among the main variables related to TMT process. This study not only contributes to find the concealed mechanism but also advances building up an effective TMT in practice.Team interdependence was introduced into this study. At the same time, team communication and team cohesion were used to construct a simplified team process. On the one hand, seeing team interdependence as a moderator variable, this study constructed a moderator model including team process and performance. On the other hand, seeing team interdependence as a preexisting cause of TMT process, this study constructed a path analysis model including team communication, team cohesion, team performance, firm performance.Using the SPSS16.0, LISREL8.80 STUDENT software to deal with the empirical data from corporations, this study made some conclusions as followed: (1) Team interdependence moderates the relationships between team process and TMT performance, firm performance; (2) As independent variable, team interdependence has a direct effect on team communication; team interdependence has not a direct effect on team cohesion, but has an indirect effect on cohesion. (3) Communication has different effects on the team performance and the team cohesion, communication has a direct effect on cohesion but has not direct effect on team performance. (4) Team cohesion, a kind of affective output of the team process, has not a direct effect on team performance (a kind of output of task). (5) Both the team cohesion and the team performance have direct effects on the firm performance.