The Top Management Team: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and a Roadmap for Scholarship

Abstract

Who constitutes the top management team (TMT)? What are the boundary conditions that distinguish the TMT from other managers? Despite nearly four decades of TMT research, the concept of the TMT remains poorly defined and often goes undefined in empirical TMT research. We conducted a review of the TMT literature to better understand how the TMT construct is conceptualized and operationalized, to identify gaps in alignment and consistency, and to develop a roadmap for scholars to improve both aspects of the literature. We review all TMT-related papers published in Financial Times 50 (FT50) journals between 1984 and 2019. Our analysis reveals (1) a wide discrepancy in conceptual definitions of the TMT among the minority of studies actually providing a conceptual definition, (2) operationaliza