Functional Top Management Team Members: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda

Abstract

Functional top management team (TMT) members, defined as senior executives in the TMT responsible for one or more functional areas in their organizations, have received increased attention from scholars from different fields over the past few years. The purpose of this article is to review the disconnected research on various functional TMT members; to identify the variables of interest, the dominant relationships, and the contributions; and to organize the existing knowledge into a framework. On the basis of a synthesis of the literature, the author discusses the shortcomings and gaps and presents an agenda for future research that contributes to our understanding of functional TMT members and, thus, of TMT structure and composition.