Abstract
In this paper, we jointly consider the organization of the Top Management Team (hereafter: TMT) and the exploitation of opportunities by firms. Specifically, we study whether different ways to combine six main organizational elements of the TMT (i.e., different TMT configurations) relate to opportunities exploited by the firm. Applying a cluster analysis to a sample of 237 Italian firms, collected through a large-scale survey addressed to CEOs, we find three well-characterized clusters, which deploy different configurations of the selected organizational elements. We label these configurations as CEO centric TMT, integrated TMT, and incentive based TMT. Then, we find these TMT organizational configurations are associated with different levels of opportunity exploitation. In particular, integrated TMT and incentive based TMT perform better in exploiting opportunities in general and innovation opportunities (i.e., related to changes in processes, products and markets). Moreover, integrated TMT are positively related to change opportunities (i.e., associated with changes in the organization).