One conclusion of the empirical part of this thesis is that some dimensions are
more relevant than others. It seems that with the ongoing process of globalization and
increasing international involvement of business enterprises, aspects of top management
team internationalization, such as nationality diversity and diversity in
international experience, have become important. Traditional diversity dimensions,
such as functional diversity, educational diversity and diversity in industry experience,
while associated with firm strategy and degree of organizational complexity, did not
have significant effects on corporate performance. The relationship between
nationality diversity and performance, however, proved to be an intriguing one. By
utilizing the time dimension of the dataset as well as accounting for the nested
structure of the data, in the third essay evidence was found that diversity in national
origin of top management team members has positive effects on company stock
market performance. The fourth essay found some results that at first glance may
seem contradictory. Applying covariance structure analysis, a direct negative
relationship between nationality diversity and firm stock market performance was
discovered. This negative relationship, however, was outweighed by the positive
effects mediated through executive compensation. The results suggest that researchers
need to look beyond simple direct effects in order to understand the complexity of
organizational phenomena and their interrelationships.