An upper echelon's perspective investigating the Chief Executive Office and top management team interactions during strategic decision making

Triana et al. (2014), Van Essen et al. (2015), and Finkelstein (1992) all point to a plethora of study on power in the upper echelons. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO)-focused arm, the Top Management Team (TMT)-focused arm, and the interface arm are the three arms of power. According to Fleenor (2001), despite the wealth of study on power in the upper echelons, relatively little has focused on the power relations between the CEO and the top management team during strategic decision-making. Literature has highlighted the importance of either Chief Executive Officer or Top Management team power. Despite studies on interactions between CEOs and top management teams, the emphasis has been on organizational performance and compensation (Kisfalvi et al., 2016). The primary objective of the current study, and the addressed gap, was investigating the Chief executive officer and top management team interactions focusing on power relations during strategic decision-making in a new cultural context, drawing conclusions from qualitative primary data collected. This study adopted a constructivist ontology with an interpretivist epistemology to address the research gap. A qualitative method was adopted for this study. Informed by Eisenhardt (1989), a multiple-case study research design was adopted through the upper-echelon theoretical lens. Tools for collecting data were semi-structured interviews as primary data and documents as secondary data. The data was collected from two countries, Uganda and Kenya focusing on the private and public banks in the bank and finance sector. Data In Uganda was collected from two private (commercial banks) and one public (Central bank) while in Kenya data was collected from two private (commercial banks) and one public (Central bank). A total of twenty-eight (28) semi-structured interviews were collected from private and public banks in Kenya and Uganda. The study found that three key power tactics (Coalition, Consultation and Collaboration) that influence the Chief executive officer (CEO)and top management team interactions during strategic decision making . The CEO and TMT are meant to use the tactics in specific ways. To further their goals, the top management team consults and engages in informal lobbying. Although it is simply a façade, the CEO and senior management team collaborate to make sure that the organization’s objectives are in line with the CEO’s priorities and that the CEO is on board to stress the CEO’s legitimacy and authority. The in-group/out-group mentality is promoted through the coalition strategy. The in-group coalition, according to the participants, makes sure that the senior management team collaborates to achieve a common goal. In addition, hierarchical power and expert power was found dominating the CEO-TMT relationship among both private and public banks in Uganda and Kenya . mixed findings in managing conflict among the CEO-TMT relations, with TMT in public banks in Uganda avoiding conflict while CEO and TMT in public and private banks in Uganda and Kenya managing through conflict resolution.