Executive demography, social processes and organizational learning

In view of the recent paradigm shift in top management research, this research intends to investigate the 'black box" of organizational demography, i.e. social processes within top management teams. While the conventional studies used top management demography to proxy cognitive constructs and social interactions under the "congruence assumption", recent meta-analytical papers point at poor correlations and inconsistent results in the stream of demographic research.
This research project includes two parts. In the first part, a survey will be conducted among the executives of Dutch firms in order to study the interrelation between the demographic characteristics, cognitive constructs and social processes. Results of this analysis will be used to model the relationship between top team demography, social processes and organizational outcomes (learning, strategic behavior, performance) in a subsequent longitudinal study (second part of the project).