CEO Relational Leadership and Product Innovation Performance: The Roles of TMT Behavior and Characteristics

Abstract

CEO leadership is considered a critical antecedent of product innovation performance, but the relational aspect of leadership has been largely neglected in this area. Drawing on upper echelons theory and relational leadership literature, this study explores whether, how, and when CEO relational leadership influences product innovation performance. Specifically, we analyze the underlying mechanism of TMT (top management team) voice behavior and two boundary conditions—TMT educational level and TMT age. Based on multi-source and multi-wave data on 105 Chinese firms, this study finds that CEO relational leadership plays an important role in promoting product innovation performance through the intervening mechanism of TMT voice behavior. Furthermore, the positive relationship between CEO relational leadership and TMT voice behavior is stronger in TMTs with higher educational level and lower age. This study contributes to the existing literature by empirically examining the under-investigated relationship between CEO relational leadership and product innovation performance, and by disentangling the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions.

Industry and Regional Peer Effects in Corporate Digital Transformation: The Moderating Effects of TMT Characteristics

“…Younger executives and older executives tend to differ in terms of management experience, risk preference, and information acquisition and processing [57][58][59]. As Hambrick and Mason (1984) have pointed out, age to some extent reflects an executive's experience and risk preference [39].…”

“…Education can reflect the cognitive ability and knowledge range of executives to some extent [59,61,62]. Wiersema and Bantel (1992) have found that highly-educated TMTs are more willing to make strategic changes [63].…”

“…Age it represents the TMT age characteristic of firm i at year t. Referring to Malmendier and Tate (2005) [74] and Wang, Su, and Sun (2022) [59], the average age of all executives plus 1 is used as a logarithmic measure. The smaller the value, the younger the TMT age average.…”

“…Edu it represents the TMT education characteristic of firm i at year t. Referring to Malmendier and Tate (2005) [74]; Wang, Su, and Sun (2022) [59]; and Liu, Huang, and Kim et al (2023) [75], the average education characteristic is measured by assigning values from 1 to 5 depending on whether the education includes other academic qualifications, specialist education, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, or doctoral degrees, respectively. The higher the value, the higher the higher education level of the TMT.…”

Examining the Influence of CEO Characteristics and Brand Image on Performance of Food and Beverages MSMEs in Indonesia: The Mediating Role of Competitive Advantage

“…We measure this variable using some indicators such as: age (Wang et al, 2022), gender (Bsoul et al, 2022), educational background (Mukherjee & Sen, 2022), tenure (Huang et al, 2023) (Carmeli et al, 2012), work experience (Huang et al, 2023), ownership (Bsoul et al, 2022), and relational leadership (Wang et al, 2022). Age is an important indicator of CEO characteristics as it can influence their leadership style, decision-making, and experience.…”