Joining forces: Top management team and board chair characteristics as antecedents of board service involvement

•In early stage high tech firms, boards are highly involved in the service role.•We build on the attention based view and self-efficacy to study the service role.•Top Management Team diversity positively affects board strategic involvement.•CEO duality negatively affects board strategic involvement.•Board chair industry experience is an important moderator in our model.

Boards in early stage high tech firms have an important role to play through their involvement in service tasks. Building on the attention based view of the firm and self-efficacy theory, we investigate the role of top management team (TMT) and board chair characteristics as antecedents of board service involvement (BSI). Studying a sample of 117 Norwegian early stage high tech firms, we find that TMT diversity positively affects BSI, whereas CEO duality negatively affects BSI. We further find that the industry experience of the board chair positively moderates the relationship between TMT size and BSI whereas CEO duality reinforces the TMT diversity-BSI relationship.