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Experience maketh the mind? Top management teams’ experiential background and cognitive search for adaptive solutions

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  • Jatinder S Sidhu
  • Mariano L M Heyden
  • Henk W Volberda
  • Frans A J Van Den Bosch

Abstract

The adaptive strategies of firms depend on executives’ forward-looking cognitive search. We examine how cognitive search is affected by the formative experiences of the executives making up a firm’s top management team (TMT). Drawing on research on adaptive search, cognition, and the upper echelons, we examine the extent to which educational level, diversity of functional expertise, and the length of industry tenure of TMT members will be associated with whether cognitive search centers more on proximal or on distal solutions. Analysis of 10 years of panel-data from US companies shows that whereas a TMT’s educational level does not seem to affect cognitive search, diversity of functional expertise does so, as predicted, and industry tenure does so in a manner we had not fully anticipated. Additional analysis also shows that whether cognitive search is proximal or distal is associated with whether firms enter into related or unrelated new product-markets. The article discusses the implications of these findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Jatinder S Sidhu & Mariano L M Heyden & Henk W Volberda & Frans A J Van Den Bosch, 2020. "Experience maketh the mind? Top management teams’ experiential background and cognitive search for adaptive solutions," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 29(2), pages 333-350.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:29:y:2020:i:2:p:333-350.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtz041
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General

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