Organizational Collaboration in the Public Sector: Do Chief Executives Make a Difference?

Upper echelons theory suggests that the characteristics of chief executives affect the strategic choices of their organizations. In this paper we examine whether the characteristics of top managers make a difference to the extent of inter-organizational collaboration in the public sector. Using survey data from 228 chief executives from Catalonia, we test upper echelons theory, and control for top managers " institutional settings such as the size and the sector of the organization, as well as the socioeconomic context. The empirical results suggest that collaboration is influenced by the characteristics of senior chief executives: in particular, the extent of collaboration is affected positively by their educational qualifications and concern for self development, and negatively by their age.