TOP MANAGEMENT TEAMS’ CHARACTERISTICS INFLUENCE ON STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING

Abstract

Strategic decision-making is a key factor of enterprise’s development. Moreover, the enterprise’s top management team constitutes the base for decision-making.
Previous research has studied the effects of top management team characteristics on strategic decision-making and performance by analyzing team demographics such as age and tenure in different enterprises in various countries and got the ambiguous results. Hence this paper admits that this complex relation needs to be further explored on emerging markets enterprises.
The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of the individual characteristics of top management team members on managerial strategic decision making.
Design/methodology/approach – Members of 27 top management teams were interviewed.
The results of the study prove that demographic characteristics are valuable for predicting which approach to decision making is preferred by managers in Ukraine joint stock companies.
The results of the research indicate that the average age, level of decision-makers’ education and their position are positively associated with an approach to rational decision-making and negatively with an intuitive approach to decision-making. No differences were found in the approach to decision making regarding gender.
Practical implications − Research results may be important for companies to recruiting and selecting new top managers.
Originality/value – This research contributes existing knowledge by reducing the ambiguity of previous research results regarding the effects of management teams’ characteristics influence on strategic decision making.
In terms of the study results, the implications and limitations were discussed, as well as some opportunities for future studies were offered.