This study reviews recent research building on Hambrick and Mason’s [Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9: 193–206] upper echelons (UE) perspective with the aim of identifying challenges and opportunities for future UE-based organizations research. Our review highlights a number of central facets of the UE perspective: It is at once a theoretical framework predicting that organizations will be a reflection of their top management teams and a methodology that relies on executive demography as a measurement proxy for underlying individual and group cognitions and behaviors. In proposing new research directions, we challenge organizations researchers to (1) reconsider the universality of the top management team (TMT) construct, (2) carefully explore the practical and theoretical meaning of TMT demographic characteristics vis-à-vis the deeper constructs they are presumed to proxy, (3) integrate other determinants of managerial cognition and behavior into UE theorizing, and (4) revisit the roles of causality and intertemporal dynamics among the antecedents, consequences, and composition of top management teams.

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Some top executives are more committed to the status quo-particularly to their organization's current strategy and leadership profile-than are others. Most empirical research on upper echelons treats psychological phenomena as a 'black box'-the unobserved intervening mechanbms-that causes associations between more observable executive characieristics and organizational outcomes. In contrast, this paper attempts to directly examine the determinants of an important element of an executive's psychological orientation-commitment to the status quo (CSQ). We focus on a select set of variables which have been posited in prior research as determinants of executive CSQ, but which have not been directlj tested for such a relationship. Based on a large-scale survey methodology, results suggest that an e.recutive's tenure in an industry is a pronounced determinant of CSQ, and hm signijkantly more impact than organizational tenure. As expected, the firm's current performance was found to be positively related to CSQ; this relationship was stronger in high-disc retion than in low-discretion industries. Finally, the project reaffirms a well known human tendency: incumbent CEOs tend to believe that their eventual successors should be just lihe them.

While top executives are argued to play a central role in strategic adaptation, evidence suggests that they are not equally open to organizational change. This study extends earlier investigation of the determinants of top executive commitment to the status quo (CSQ) to the international arena, examining the influence of cultural values on executive open‐mindedness toward change. Using data from a survey of top managers in 20 countries, analyses reveal that values of individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and long‐term orientation are significantly related to executives’ adherence to existing strategy and leadership profiles. Further, while confirming earlier findings that industry tenure is positively related to strategy CSQ, results show that tenure does not significantly affect leadership CSQ once cultural values are controlled. In summary, the findings reveal that culture has an important impact on executive mindsets, as demonstrated by the fact that executives of differing cultural background are not equally open to change in organizational strategy and leadership profiles. Second, the findings suggest that executives’ views of appropriate leadership profiles reflect the imprint of cultural socialization moreso than professional experience. Finally, and more broadly, the study offers empirical support for the view that values figure prominently in shaping executives’ strategic and leadership orientations. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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