Human capital in top management teams seen through the lens of senior human resources managers: An exploratory analysis
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the strong influence of Hambrick and Mason’s (1984) seminal work, the effects of top management team (TMT) characteristics on strategic processes remain unclear. This study aims to go beyond the traditional upper echelon theory and to propose a human capital taxonomy of TMTs from the perspective of top human resources managers.
Design/methodology/approach
The research integrates arguments from the strategic human capital and strategic issue diagnosis literatures. An exploratory cluster analysis was conducted in an attempt to describe different human capital typologies in TMTs in a sample of 120 Spanish companies.
Findings
The exploratory analysis showed three distinct human capital profiles: “technocratic teams”, “highly skilled teams” and “operational teams”. In addition, this paper provides preliminary results about the effects of each profile in the above taxonomy on strategic issue diagnostic processes, suggesting that “highly skilled teams” present the most appropriate combination of human capital attributes.
Practical/implications
This analysis provides a guide for top managers regarding the human capital needs they may face when interpreting strategic issues in strategy formation processes.
Originality/value
This paper makes a twofold contribution to the extant literature: proposing an analysis of TMTs’ human capital from a synergistic perspective (“human capital profiles”) instead of using the traditional “more is better” approach and providing preliminary explanations about how those human capital combinations contribute to success in the strategic issue diagnosis process.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors appear in alphabetical order and they have contributed equally to this paper. The research project described in this paper was developed under the Research Group SEJ-449 funded by the Andalusian Government (Andalusian Plan for R and D and I 2007-2013) and the Research Project ECO2014-56580-R, funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Technology (Non-oriented Fundamental Research Projects Subprogram), and the Research Project P12-SEJ-1810 (Andalusian Government).
Citation
Garcia-Carbonell, N., Martin-Alcazar, F. and Sanchez-Gardey, G. (2018), "Human capital in top management teams seen through the lens of senior human resources managers: An exploratory analysis", European Business Review, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 571-590. https://doi.org/10.1108/EBR-03-2017-0064
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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