The Upper Echelons Perspective 40 Years Later: Revisiting its Core Premise

The authors examine whether support for a core premise of the Upper Echelons Perspective (UEP) - that top executives' experiences, values, and personalities shape their interpretations of strategic situations, influence how they react, and ultimately produce organizations that become a reflection of their leaders – has endured the forty years since the theory's formulation. They assess this premise within one of the UEP's primary literatures, the relationship between top management team demographic characteristics and strategic change, using a replication and meta-analysis. Findings show that a foundational UEP study's findings were not replicable. However, a meta-analysis of 118 samples reporting 33,337 firm-level relationships confirms much of the original framework and reveals that its associations were contingent upon how the team is measured and the study time-periods. Overall, while the UEP's core premise has remained durable, boundary conditions are emerging that impact its external validity and robustness.