The Influence of Top Management Teams in the Strategic Orientation and Performance of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Identifying which factors affect firms' performance is a critical issue in strategic management research. This paper addresses the influence of managerial team over the behaviour and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By treating top management team (TMT) characteristics as predictors of a firm's strategic orientation, we seek to provide a more complete understanding of how the characteristics of managerial teams shape decision-making processes and SMEs' behaviours in order to successfully compete in low munificent environments. Based on primary data regarding managerial characteristics and firms' behaviours of a sample of 295 SMEs, our results confirm that a firm's strategic orientation plays a mediating role in explaining how TMT characteristics determine SMEs' performance.