The Impact of Top Management Team (TMT) Meeting Praxes on Organizational Performance

Abstract

Understanding the implications of meeting praxes on empirical organizational performance in addition to subjective measures has been identified as a research gap in need of examination. This study evaluates the various meeting praxes of a top management team (TMT) and correlating effects on its empirical organizational performance over a 42-month period. In particular, this study creates a model identifying relationships between how dollar sales, units of product sold and units produced are influenced by the meeting praxes of assignment of action items, meeting frequency, meeting length, meeting materials (including meeting notes, Excel data and PowerPoint presentations), CEO direction and CEO feedback. The model was tested during the same week as each meeting and one, two, three and four weeks post meeting to investigate the effects of temporality.

The results of this study suggest that meeting length, Excel data and CEO direction are positively related to empirical outcomes: meeting length at two weeks post meeting; Excel data at all but one-week post meeting; and CEO direction at three weeks post meeting. PowerPoint presentations and assignment of action items are negatively related to outcomes: PowerPoint at two weeks post meeting; assignment of action items the same week as the meeting, one week and three weeks post meeting. In this particular study, meeting frequency, meeting notes and CEO feedback had no significant effect on empirical results.

As with any study limited to one organization, more research is needed to better understand this topic.