Sustainability in SMEs: Top management teams behavioral integration as source of innovativeness

Top management teams' (TMTs') behavioral integration has received extensive attention from strategic management scholars in recent years. To learn more about the consequences of this phenomenon at the team level, we explore the relationship between TMTs' behavioral integration with their innovativeness and sustainability orientation. To accomplish this, we surveyed 40 TMTs in Iranian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at two points in time. We ran a hierarchical multiple regression in order to test the hypotheses of the study. Building a theoretical model based on the Upper-Echelons framework, we found that the extent to which a TMT is behaviorally integrated is positively and significantly related to TMT innovativeness. Furthermore, our result reveals that a highly behaviorally integrated TMT is more likely to engage in sustainability-oriented actions. Hence, behaviorally integrated TMTs offer its team members an increased chance of being innovative and generating new ideas as compared to less behaviorally integrated TMTs. Finally, our results indicate that the generation of novel ideas is higher in teams with younger members, and that highly educated TMTs generate more innovative ideas in the workplace.