Senior Management Team Cohesion Factors

Top management team in house of the enterprise is the core of the entire enterprise. Their decision- making will influence the rise and fall of an enterprise. They also represent the behavior of the entire enterprise in the external aspect of the enterprise. Their implementation (to implement their decisions) will decide the fate of the enterprise due to the top management team being responsible for the making business management decisions to the whole organization. So the team performance will largely affect the corporate performance. Top management team is the team formed by the top managers who mainly undertake the strategic decision-making responsibilities and is the core group of determining the development of the enterprise and influencing the corporate performance. Cohesion was defined as "the degree of team members attracted with each other". (Shaw, 1981, p.213) The affect of cohesion to the team behavior has had a long history. (Bettenhausen, 1991. Godman et al, 1987). Many researchers have emphasized the highest relevance of cohesion and team performance. Thus, in this study, we will focus on research of the affecting factors of the top management team cohesion. It possesses the great theoretical and practical guiding meaning. In the first chapter of this paper are put forward the research background and significance of the affecting factors of the enterprise's top management team cohesion : to carry out a literature summarization on "top management team" research both at home and abroad ; then to define the definition of the enterprise's top management team ; in the third to draw on the research results of the experts and scholars both at home and abroad and to put forward the concept of the corporate top management team performance ;in the end to proceed a literature summarization on the enterprise's top team cohesion. In the second chapter are expounded the affecting factors of top management team cohesion. In the third chapter are used the questionary survey and depth-interviews to research and analysis the affecting factors to the top management team cohesion. In the fourth chapter on the basis of concrete analysis the relationship between improving top management team performance and cohesion is put forward to propose several practicing measures of improving the top management team cohesion : to construct a reasonable team structure; to create a viable team culture ; to establish an effective team information structure ; to draw up an effective and restraint mechanisms. In the fifth chapter the well-known international business cases are analysed by us to verify the correctness of our views. Finally, there are conclusions and prospects.