A few good women-on top management teams

Our study extends the upper echelon framework to gender diversity in top management teams (TMTs), a topic that has received little attention in management. We study the direct impact of representation of women on TMTs on organizational performance. We also study the moderating effects of environmental characteristics on the TMT women-performance linkage. In a sample of 679 firms from the 1998 Fortune 1000 list, our results show a positive relationship between the proportion of women on TMTs and organizational performance. The moderating effects of environmental characteristics, namely, munificence, dynamism, and complexity, are not supported. These results reveal that the role played by top women managers transcends the demands of the environment. Our study has implications for the career development of women. In addition, our results have the potential to generalize to managers from other nationalities.