Conveniencing the Family In Agri-Based Processing Enterprise

industry reacted slowly to competitorsâ€&#x; actions, while Smith et al. (1994) found that teams with high tenure heterogeneity showed lower returns on investment in high-technology firms. The conflicts in the research findings are partly attributed to the differences in conceptual definitions and empirical measures used for TMT (e.g. TMT as excluding or including the board of directors, differences in hierarchical position or actual degree of involvement in decision processes, and variations in TMT sizes). Subsequently, Finkelstein, and Hambrick (1996) expanded the upper echelon theory to embrace the psychological factors of top managers, group aspects, and contingent aspects, to gain a more complete view of how these influence information processing and strategic decision making.

Critics have levelled a number of criticisms against the upper echelon theory. Firstly, these studies have a questionable assumption that measures of demographic heterogeneity can be a proxy for cognitive heterogeneity and the world view of strategic leaders (Carpenter et al., 2004; Priem et al., 1999). The focus on executive demographics or composition as a proxy for processes, cognitions, and behaviours in the upper echelon theory is erroneous. The relative ease of obtaining demographics over process measures in the upper echelon theory reinforces this focus. As such, some scholars denigrate the upper echelon theory as a “theory of group composition� and not leadership (Boal and Hooijberg, 2000:524).

Secondly, the upper echelon theory obscures the processes that link the composition of the upper echelon or group composition with decision-making and organisation performance. In other words, the theory fails to explore how group composition impacts on internal processes (e.g. conflict management, communication), group psychosocial factors (e.g. norms, shared mental models), firm and organisational level variables. TMT research pays too little attention to the actual mechanisms that serve to convert group characteristics into organisational outcomes and the actual participation in choice and decision processes by individuals due to the tendency of attaching significance to titles or hierarchical positions (Carpenter et al., 2004:761-768).

Following a review of 188 articles published in The Leadership Quarterly for the decade after 1990, Lowe and Gardiner (2001:494) are convinced that scholars do not know much about the 76