The Top Management Team: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and a Roadmap for Scholarship
回顾1984至2019年间FT50期刊中所有高层管理团队论文，发现概念定义不一致、操作化依赖数据可得性而非定义，导致研究缺乏连贯性，并整合学界与业界观点提出新定义和研究路线图。
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) operationalizations seemingly based more on data availability rather than alignment with a conceptual definition, and as a result, (3) an overall lack of coherence in understanding of the TMT phenomenon. We explore these challenges, develop a definition of the TMT that integrates insight from the academic and practitioner communities, and build a roadmap for future TMT and upper echelons research.