CEO emotional stability and top management team dynamics: an empirical examination

We examine the link between CEO personality and top management team (TMT) dynamics. Our work compliments both Judge and Bono (2000), who initiated research into the Five Factor Model of personality and linked them to specific CEO leadership traits, and the work of Peterson, Martorana, Smith and Owens (2003) who hypothesize a linkage between CEO placement on the Five Factor model of personality and TMT dynamics. We clarify and empirically confirm the relationship between CEO Emotional Stability and TMT dynamics using improved methods and a more robust data set. We compliment and extend previous research by using measures of TMT dynamics previously demonstrated to link to firm performance: task conflict, relationship conflict, social integration, and shared cognition. We find that CEO Emotional Stability is positively correlated with TMT task conflict and social integration, but is not correlated with TMT relationship conflict or shared cognition.