Abstract

This study contributes to the emerging dialogue on the relationships between top management team (TMT) functional background diversity, organizational ambidexterity and company performance. Although small firms (SEs) represent a fundamental component of every nation’s economy, to our knowledge SEs have never been considered as specific units of analysis in the context of this dialogue. Therefore, logistic regression was applied to a sample of 502 Italian manufacturing SEs, 244 operating in the fashion industry and 258 operating in other low technology industries. The principal findings are the following: i) there is a significant and positive relationship between SE TMT diversity and SE organizational ambidexterity; ii) the chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) functional background and power act as moderators in this relationship; iii) there is a significant and positive relationship between SE organizational ambidexterity and SE performance and this relationship is positively moderated by the level of complexity of the industry environment.

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