Misfit and milestones: structural elaboration and capability reinforcement in the evolution of entrepreneurial top Management teams created by Amanda J. Ferguson , Lisa E. Cohen , M. Diane Burton and Christine M. Beckman

We examine how “top management team (TMT) misfit,” or discrepancies between the TMT’s functional roles and the qualifications of the managers who fill those roles, affects the evolution of TMT composition and structure in a longitudinal study of entrepreneurial ventures. We distinguish two types of misfit—overqualification and underqualification—and study how each is associated with TMT changes. We further consider the moderating effect of firm development. Results reveal that underqualified TMTs hire new managers to reinforce existing capabilities whereas overqualified TMTs elaborate their role structures. However, achieving developmental milestones (i.e., obtaining venture capital funding and staging an initial public offering) is a critical contingency to TMT change: absent these milestones, firms neither hire new managers nor add roles, even when they seemingly need to do so. These findings contribute to knowledge of how TMTs and new ventures evolve by underscoring the importance of simultaneously attending to TMT composition and structure. Figures References Related Details Vol. 59, No. 4 Permissions Permissions Metrics Downloaded 54 times in the past 12 months History Published online 20 July 2015 Published in print 1 August 2016 Information © Academy of Management Journal Keywords composition entrepreneurship hiring job creation misfit new ventures roles structure top management teams We thank Marc Gruber and the three anonymous Academy of Management Journal reviewers, as well as Phanish Puranam, Elena Belogolovsky, John Hausknecht, Joe Broschak, and Bart Sharp for their invaluable comments and advice. We also thank participants in research seminars at London Business School, Tulane (Freeman School of Business), University of Navarra (IESE), and Bocconi for their feedback. Download PDF