Managing and Mobilizing Microdynamics to Achieve Behavioral Integration in Top Management Teams

While the strategic leadership literature has examined relationships between top management team characteristics and various types of outcomes, there has been relatively little research on the ways in which these teams' members dynamically interact. In an attempt to shed light on this aspect, we conducted an exploratory study of the dynamics in two top management teams. We focused on interactions between team members and on their inter-relationships during decision-making processes. Our study led us to identify five forms of microdynamics, which we labeled the constellation, the bridge, the triangle, the umbrella and the island. We present each of these microdynamics and discuss their consequences for the team's functioning and for behavioral integration, drawing on our own data, and on examples from other texts (published cases and book chapters, the popular press). Our findings show how each of these microdynamics influences the team's collective processes and how they may interact with each other to produce greater or lesser degrees of behavioral integration within the team. The bridge microdynamic emerges as particularly important in generating greater behavioral integration. Because these microdynamics can yield positive and negative consequences, the way they are managed can play a role in effectively mobilizing team diversity while avoiding counterproductive and detrimental situations.