Supply chain management executives in corporate upper echelons

•Supply chain management as a source of competitive advantage should be supported by appropriate representation in a firm׳s top management team (TMT).•This longitudinal study investigates TMT representation of SCM functions.•Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) representation has increased over time, but is still at a comparably low level.•Also other TMT members – including the CEO – have increasingly gained SCM experience in former positions.

Supply chain strategies and their implementation have been recognized as a source of competitive advantage. According to the principle “structure follows strategy”, we expect the number of firms having supply chain management (SCM) functions represented on their top management team (TMT) to have increased in the past years. However, little is known about the degree to which executives responsible for SCM functions (i.e., Chief Supply Chain Officers) are present or absent in TMTs and if their presence is related to firm performance. Therefore, we study the TMTs of large US corporations and show that SCM is present in upper echelons, either through executives whose responsibilities explicitly include SCM or indirectly by executives, especially CEOs, who had acquired SCM experience in their previous positions. However, firms׳ operating margins are lower when a Chief Supply Chain Officer is present in the TMT.