Cultivating a resilient top management team: The importance of relational connections and strategic decision comprehensiveness

Despite growing research interest in both top management team (TMT) processes and resilience in organizations, these two streams of research have remained largely separate, let alone fully developed. In this study, we examine whether and why relational connections marked by connectivity facilitate strategic decision comprehensiveness, and cultivate two forms of TMT resilience that capture both efficacious beliefs and adaptive capacity. Based on a sample of 74 TMTs, the findings of this study indicate that (1) connectivity is positively related to strategic decision comprehensiveness, (2) strategic decision comprehensiveness is positively associated with both forms of TMT resilience, and (3) connectivity is indirectly, through strategic decision comprehensiveness, related to both TMT resilience-efficacious beliefs and TMT resilience-adaptive capacity. These findings have direct implications for research on TMTs, decision-making processes, and resilience by specifying the ways in which relational connections help build capacities in senior executive teams.