TMT Tenure Diversity and Its Performance: The Moderating Role of Behavioral Integration

Previous research has an inconclusive conclusion on the effect of top management team (TMT) diversity on TMT performance. Integrating insights from organizational information processing theory and social identity and self categorization theory, we start by investigating tenure diversity, among different types of TMT diversity. We argue that different dimensions of tenure diversity (i.e., tenure variety and tenure separation) have divergent influences on TMT performance. Based on data provided by 261 senior managers from 110 enterprises in China, we find that (1) TMT tenure variety positively affects TMT performance. (2) TMT tenure separation negatively affects TMT performance. (3) The level of behavioral integration positively moderates the relationship between TMT tenure variety and TMT performance. Our empirical findings provide substantial support to our arguments and thus this research offers both theoretical and practical implications.