Top Management Team Expansion Study: A New Approach Based on the Team Life Cycle

The top management team occupies the position at the top of the organizational management hierarchy, is charged with making strategic decisions, and is crucial to the success of the entire business. The study of top management teams has increased dramatically since the publication of the upper echelons theory. The research findings on the relationship between demographic characteristics and their differences and corporate performance, however, lack stability. This is true whether discussing the relationship between the characteristics of the top management team and organizational performance from the perspective of the team's demographic characteristics and their differences or concentrating on the top management team's interaction process to study the mediating role of team process variables between the team's demographic characteristics and strategic decisions and corporate performance. This paper explores a unique research path for the study of top management teams by reviewing the research lineage of these teams, analyzing the shortcomings of previous studies, and proposing a new line of inquiry based on the team life cycle viewpoint.