The effect of heterogeneousity of the top management teams on business performance: A research on Turkish business group affilation

In this study, the significance of demographic characteristics of the managers of the founder families' businesses in the Istanbul Stock Exchange was examined for business performance. The evidences suggest that demographic characteristics form managers' cognitive structure. Thus they play crucial roles on managers' decisions and are dominant factor in their implementations. The distribution of aforementioned characteristics of managers has influences on performance both in the management and business dimensions. All of the demographic characteristics that can be observed at any managers of the any Turkish businesses were used in this study, while just a few of demographic characteristics in our study were used in previous studies. The results of regression analysis reveal that the structures formed by the managers who are members of founder family have positive contribution to the performance of business. The results of the study based on our analysis have two significant consequences. First, contrary to the established fact of the management science, the fact that family members who are part of the executive teams lead to higher performance in the various size businesses is a new important finding for the management science. Second, the study has significance results for the Turkish business groups. The study suggests the characteristics of the managers necessary for higher performance that must be taken into consideration by the business owners when they select the executive team.