Our study contributes to the upper echelons literature by providing an
initial examination of the relationship of TMT personality and leadership
composition with organizational effectiveness. The findings revealed that
TMT mean conscientiousness was associated with an objective lagged
measure of organizational performance, even controlling for the effects
of CEO personality and leadership. Further, TMT mean transformational
leadership, along with CEO transformational leadership, was related to
organizational commitment. Although it is not surprising that collective
leadership matters given that TMTs are charged with leading the organization,
it was relatively surprising to find that both the conscientiousness
of an inner circle of leaders and the conscientiousness of the CEO are
related directly to a lagged financial indicator of organizational performance.
We also found that CEO emotional stability and openness were
AMY E. COLBERT ET AL. 33
indirectly related to organizational effectiveness through their effects on
CEO leadership. By comparison, most demographic characteristics were
not significantly related to organizational performance or collective organizational
commitment, which illustrates the importance of using direct
measures of personality and leadership rather than proxies when examining
TMT effects.