Top Management Team Strategic Capacity: Diversity, Collectivity & Trust

Firms are working in increasingly dynamic and un-predictable markets due to economic instability, globalisation, and disruptive technologies. The uncertainty and lack of information that accompanies strategy making in these turbulent conditions places the strategic capacity of the top management team (TMT) under stress. However, there is little accessible research that can help top teams to evaluate their composition and its impact upon their strategic capacity. This paper seeks to fill this gap by explaining the relationships between TMT diversity, TMT collective action and the strategy-making process. Since collective action is difficult to attain from top teams that are high in diversity, the importance of trust as a vital component of TMT strategic capacity if explained. The paper concludes with recommendations for developing and exploiting top team strategic capacity.