11th Annual International Bata Conference for Ph.D. Students and Young Researchers

Martin Hrabal

Ongoing processes of internationalisation and globalisation have shown the need to understand the role of nationality in business performance. The main global players are multinational companies managed by multinational teams. Although top management team (TMT) diversity is widely discussed in different studies, the majority of them are focused on the impact of internationalisation on firm performance, whereas the impact of national diversity on individual (top management) level remains relatively unexplored. One of the main reasons for that is the high controversy of the study results on this topic. The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical overview of the previous research on national diversity of TMT. It identifies a problem of definition of TMT and suggests narrowing the term down to the level of management which influences the strategic development of a firm. This paper defines the main directions and problems of the analysed area. Cultural heterogeneity describes differences in values, language and other non-materialistic concepts. Ethnicity as a concept is wider than culture and represents a group’s distinctive identity, which can be passed from one generation to the next. National heterogeneity involves additional analysis of state features, e.g. legal or industrial characteristics. Therefore it is important to analyse TMT based on the national heterogeneity, which covers not only cultural aspects, but also social, economical and political factors. As a conclusion this paper will present some ideas of possible empirical development of the current...