The Power of Strategy: When Chief Strategy Officer Power in the Top Management Team Matters

While firms increasingly choose to have a chief strategy officer (CSO) in the top management team (TMT), the influence of this executive varies considerably across firms. Drawing upon upper echelons research, we argue that the CSO's structural power in the TMT is positively associated with firm performance and that its benefits are contingent upon the TMT's cognitive diversity and the structural need for such a position. Based on a sample of 184 CSOs in S&P 500 firms, we find that CSO power in the TMT is not advantageous per se, but that the TMT's composition and structure - TMT functional heterogeneity, TMT age heterogeneity, TMT divisionalization, and chief operating officer presence - affect the relationship between CSO power and firm performance.