IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/teinso/v64y2021ics0160791x20313026.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Top management Team's cognitive diversity and the Firm's ambidextrous innovation capability: The mediating role of ambivalent interpretation

Author

Listed:
  • Kanchanabha, Bhawini
  • Badir, Yuosre F.

Abstract

The top management team (TMT) diversity has received considerable attention in literature, especially due to its influence on an organization's innovation strategy. While previous studies have considered diversity in terms of education, experience, skills, functionality, and gender, little is known about the TMT's cognitive diversity. We contribute to the literature by examining the influence of the TMT's cognitive diversity on an organization's ambidextrous innovation capability; i.e., its incremental and radical innovation capability. Results from 50 TMTs involved in the electronics industry support our hypothesized mediating role of ambivalent interpretation; that the TMT cogitative diversity positively influences ambivalent interpretation, and this, in turn, positively influences both radical and incremental innovation capability. These findings have important implications for how a firm's decision makers (i.e., the TMT) with their diverse cognitive styles support building the firm's ambidextrous capability through ambivalent interpretation.

Suggested Citation

  • Kanchanabha, Bhawini & Badir, Yuosre F., 2021. "Top management Team's cognitive diversity and the Firm's ambidextrous innovation capability: The mediating role of ambivalent interpretation," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:64:y:2021:i:c:s0160791x20313026
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101499
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X20313026
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101499?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nils Plambeck & K. Weber, 2009. "CEO Ambivalence and Responses to Strategic Issues," Post-Print hal-00464009, HAL.
    2. Karynne L. Turner & Mona V. Makhija, 2012. "The role of individuals in the information processing perspective," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(6), pages 661-680, June.
    3. Romijn, Henny & Albaladejo, Manuel, 2002. "Determinants of innovation capability in small electronics and software firms in southeast England," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1053-1067, September.
    4. Hubert Gatignon & Michael L. Tushman & Wendy Smith & Philip Anderson, 2002. "A Structural Approach to Assessing Innovation: Construct Development of Innovation Locus, Type, and Characteristics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(9), pages 1103-1122, September.
    5. Qingrui Xu & Jin Chen & Yongyi Shou & Jingjiang Liu, 2012. "Leverage Innovation Capability:Application of Total Innovation Management in China's SMEs' Study," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7855, January.
    6. Varadarajan, Rajan, 2009. "Fortune at the bottom of the innovation pyramid: The strategic logic of incremental innovations," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 21-29.
    7. Wang, Xinchun & Dass, Mayukh, 2017. "Building innovation capability: The role of top management innovativeness and relative-exploration orientation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 127-135.
    8. Martin Kilduff & Reinhard Angelmar & Ajay Mehra, 2000. "Top Management-Team Diversity and Firm Performance: Examining the Role of Cognitions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(1), pages 21-34, February.
    9. Deborah Gladstein Ancona & David F. Caldwell, 1992. "Demography and Design: Predictors of New Product Team Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 321-341, August.
    10. Satyanarayana Parayitam & Chris Papenhausen, 2016. "Agreement-seeking behavior, trust, and cognitive diversity in strategic decision making teams," Journal of Advances in Management Research, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 13(3), pages 292-315, November.
    11. Nils Plambeck & Klaus Weber, 2010. "When the Glass is Half Full and Half Empty: CEO's Ambivalent Interpretations of Strategic Issues," Post-Print hal-00528394, HAL.
    12. Fuller, Christie M. & Simmering, Marcia J. & Atinc, Guclu & Atinc, Yasemin & Babin, Barry J., 2016. "Common methods variance detection in business research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 3192-3198.
    13. Sabyasachi Sinha, 2015. "The Exploration–Exploitation Dilemma: A Review in the Context of Managing Growth of New Ventures," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 40(3), pages 313-323, September.
    14. J. Cameron Verhaal & Stanislav D. Dobrev & Lyda Bigelow, 2017. "When incremental is imperative: tactical innovation in the in-vitro fertilization industry," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(4), pages 709-726.
    15. David P. Tegarden & Linda F. Tegarden & Steven D. Sheetz, 2009. "Cognitive Factions in a Top Management Team: Surfacing and Analyzing Cognitive Diversity using Causal Maps," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 537-566, November.
    16. Karen A. Bantel & Susan E. Jackson, 1989. "Top management and innovations in banking: Does the composition of the top team make a difference?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(S1), pages 107-124, June.
    17. Sofia Borjesson & Maria Elmquist & Sophie Hooge, 2014. "The challenges of innovation capability building: Learning from longitudinal studies of innovation efforts at Renault and Volvo Cars," Post-Print halshs-00952595, HAL.
    18. Wang, Xiao-Hua (Frank) & Kim, Tae-Yeol & Lee, Deog-Ro, 2016. "Cognitive diversity and team creativity: Effects of team intrinsic motivation and transformational leadership," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 3231-3239.
    19. Hutzschenreuter, Thomas & Horstkotte, Julian, 2013. "Performance effects of international expansion processes: The moderating role of top management team experiences," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 259-277.
    20. Yuan, Wenlong & Bao, Yongjian & Olson, Bradley J., 2017. "CEOs’ ambivalent interpretations, organizational market capabilities, and corporate entrepreneurship as responses to strategic issues," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 312-326.
    21. Luis Martins & L. Schilpzand & C. Marieke & Bradley Kirkman & Silvester Ivanaj & Vera Ivanaj, 2013. "A Contingency View of the Effects of Cognitive Diversity on Team Performance: The Moderating Roles of Team Psychological Safety and Relationship Conflict," Post-Print hal-01514582, HAL.
    22. Nils Plambeck & Klaus Weber, 2010. "When the glass is half full and half empty: CEOs' ambivalent interpretations of strategic issues," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(7), pages 689-710, July.
    23. Meissner, Philip & Wulf, Torsten, 2017. "The effect of cognitive diversity on the illusion of control bias in strategic decisions: An experimental investigation," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 430-439.
    24. Sarah Kaplan, 2011. "Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 665-695, May.
    25. Aoife Brophy Haney, 2017. "Threat Interpretation and Innovation in the Context of Climate Change: An Ethical Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(2), pages 261-276, June.
    26. Sheng, Margaret L. & Chien, Iting, 2016. "Rethinking organizational learning orientation on radical and incremental innovation in high-tech firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 2302-2308.
    27. Badir, Yuosre F. & Büchel, Bettina & Tucci, Christopher L., 2009. "The performance impact of intra-firm organizational design on an alliance's NPD projects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1350-1364, October.
    28. Iben Duvald, 2019. "Exploring reasons for the weekend effect in a hospital emergency department: an information processing perspective," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, December.
    29. Li-Qun Wei & Longzeng Wu, 2013. "What a Diverse Top Management Team Means: Testing an Integrated Model," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 389-412, May.
    30. Koryak, Oksana & Lockett, Andy & Hayton, James & Nicolaou, Nicos & Mole, Kevin, 2018. "Disentangling the antecedents of ambidexterity: Exploration and exploitation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 413-427.
    31. Zeki Simsek & John F. Veiga & Michael Lubatkin & Richard N. Dino, 2005. "Modeling the Multilevel Determinants of Top management Team Behavorial Integration," Post-Print hal-02311805, HAL.
    32. Christopher W. Allinson & John Hayes, 1996. "The Cognitive Style Index: A Measure of Intuition‐Analysis For Organizational Research," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 119-135, January.
    33. Nils Plambeck & Klaus Weber, 2009. "CEO Ambivalence and Responses to Strategic Issues," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(6), pages 993-1010, December.
    34. Talke, Katrin & Salomo, Sören & Rost, Katja, 2010. "How top management team diversity affects innovativeness and performance via the strategic choice to focus on innovation fields," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 907-918, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alderman, Jillian & Forsyth, Joetta & Griffy-Brown, Charla & Walton, Richard C., 2022. "The benefits of hiring a STEM CEO: Decision making under innovation and real options," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. Siriram, Rajenlall, 2022. "An innovative approach to overcoming technological challenges and improving firm performance in South Africa," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Lulu Zhou & Haiyan Huang & Xiaolin Chen & Feng Tian, 2023. "Functional diversity of top management teams and firm performance in SMEs: a social network perspective," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 259-286, January.
    4. Priyanka, & Jain, Mahima & Dhir, Sanjay, 2022. "Antecedents of organization ambidexterity: A comparative study of public and private sector organizations," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Vaida Zemlickienė & Indrė Lapinskaitė & Zenonas Turskis, 2022. "Internal Communication in R&D: Decision-Making Methods Based on Expert Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-13, September.
    6. Rao Ma & Wendong Lv & Yao Zhao, 2022. "The Impact of TMT Experience Heterogeneity on Enterprise Innovation Quality: Empirical Analysis on Chinese Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-22, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Codou Samba & Daan Van Knippenberg & C. Chet Miller, 2018. "The impact of strategic dissent on organizational outcomes: A meta‐analytic integration," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 379-402, February.
    2. Matsuno, Ken & Kohlbacher, Florian, 2020. "Proactive marketing response to population aging: The roles of capabilities and commitment of firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 93-104.
    3. Christoph Markmann & Alexander Spickermann & Heiko A. von der Gracht & Alexander Brem, 2021. "Improving the question formulation in Delphi‐like surveys: Analysis of the effects of abstract language and amount of information on response behavior," Futures & Foresight Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(1), March.
    4. Christopher Kurzhals & Lorenz Graf‐Vlachy & Andreas König, 2020. "Strategic leadership and technological innovation: A comprehensive review and research agenda," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(6), pages 437-464, November.
    5. Kent D. Miller & Shu-Jou Lin, 2015. "Analogical reasoning for diagnosing strategic issues in dynamic and complex environments," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(13), pages 2000-2020, December.
    6. Nadežda Jankelová & Zuzana Joniaková & Juraj Mišún, 2021. "Innovative Work Behavior—A Key Factor in Business Performance? The Role of Team Cognitive Diversity and Teamwork Climate in This Relationship," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-16, April.
    7. Beverly B. Tyler & Turanay Caner, 2016. "New product introductions below aspirations, slack and R&D alliances: A behavioral perspective," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 896-910, May.
    8. Yuan, Wenlong & Bao, Yongjian & Olson, Bradley J., 2017. "CEOs’ ambivalent interpretations, organizational market capabilities, and corporate entrepreneurship as responses to strategic issues," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 312-326.
    9. Carmen Camelo-Ordaz & Joaquín García-Cruz & Elena Sousa-Ginel, 2015. "The Influence of Top Management Team Conflict on Firm Innovativeness," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 957-980, November.
    10. Blake E. Ashforth & Kristie M. Rogers & Michael G. Pratt & Camille Pradies, 2014. "Ambivalence in Organizations: A Multilevel Approach," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 1453-1478, October.
    11. Raghda Abulsaoud Ahmed Younis, 2021. "Cognitive Diversity and Creativity: The Moderating Effect of Collaborative Climate," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 14(1), pages 159-159, July.
    12. Patrick Spieth & Tobias Röth & Thomas Clauss & Christoph Klos, 2021. "Technological Frames in the Digital Age: Theory, Measurement Instrument, and Future Research Areas," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(7), pages 1962-1993, November.
    13. Fernanda Bethlem Tigre & Paulo Lopes Henriques & Carla Curado, 2022. "Building trustworthiness: Leadership self-portraits," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(6), pages 3971-3991, December.
    14. Somendra Narayan & Jatinder S. Sidhu & Henk W. Volberda, 2021. "From Attention to Action: The Influence of Cognitive and Ideological Diversity in Top Management Teams on Business Model Innovation," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(8), pages 2082-2110, December.
    15. Fernando Martin-Alcazar & Pedro M. Romero-Fernandez & Gonzalo Sanchez-Gardey, 2012. "Effects of Diversity on Group Decision-Making Processes: The Moderating Role of Human Resource Management," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 21(5), pages 677-701, September.
    16. Natalia García-Carbonell & Fernando Martín-Alcázar & Gonzalo Sánchez-Gardey, 2021. "Facing crisis periods: a proposal for an integrative model of environmental scanning and strategic issue diagnosis," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(8), pages 2351-2376, November.
    17. Michaela Wrede & Tobias Dauth, 2020. "A temporal perspective on the relationship between top management team internationalization and firms' innovativeness," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(4), pages 542-561, June.
    18. Hai-Trung Nguyen & Hao-Chieh Lin & Shao-Chi Chang, 2023. "The emergence of TMT learning goal orientation: contextual effects of TMT demographic diversity on TMT cognitive processes," Asian Business & Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(1), pages 26-54, February.
    19. Díaz-Fernández, M. Carmen & González- Rodríguez, M. Rosario & Simonetti, Biagio, 2020. "Top management team diversity and high performance: An integrative approach based on upper echelons and complexity theory," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 157-168.
    20. M. Díaz-Fernández & M. González-Rodríguez & Biagio Simonetti, 2015. "Top Management Teams’ demographic characteristics and their influence on strategic change," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 1305-1322, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:64:y:2021:i:c:s0160791x20313026. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/technology-in-society .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.