ABSTRACT
Keywords: top management networks, turnover, heterogeneity, business groups
Introduction Organisational demography (Pfeer, 1983) involves measuring the individual characteristics of persons belonging to an organisation, using these to describe the organisation and explain organisational outcomes. A common issue involved is that of explaining turnover, i.e., the exit of members of an organisation, especially members of top management teams (TMT), on the basis of such heterogeneityrelated variables as dierences in age, culture, tenure, education and functional experience (Daily and Dalton, 1995; Elron, 1997; Hambrick and D’Aveni, 1992; Keck and Tushman, 1988; Keck and Tushman, 1993; Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001; McCain, O’Reilly III and Pfeer, 1983; O’Reilly III, Caldwell and Barnett, 1989; Pelled, 1996; Wagner, Pfeer and O’Reilly III, 1984; Wiersema and Bantel, 1993, and Wiersema and Bird, 1993). A basic hypothesis concerns the “similarity-attraction paradigm” (Tsui and O’Reilly, 1989) stating that persons prefer individuals who are similar to themselves, or more specically that high heterogeneity triggers turnover.
