The impact of strategic dissent on organizational outcomes: A meta‐analytic integration

• Date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2710
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Author: Daan Van Knippenberg,C. Chet Miller,Codou Samba

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The impact of strategic dissent on organizational

outcomes: A meta-analytic integration

Codou Samba

1

| Daan Van Knippenberg

2

| C. Chet Miller

3

1

Haslam College of Business, The University of

Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee

2

LeBow College of Business, Drexel University,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

3

Bauer College of Business, University of

Houston, Houston, Texas

Correspondence

Codou Samba, Haslam College of Business, The

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996.

Email: csamba@utk.edu

Research summary:Strategic dissent represents diver-

gence in ideas, preferences, and beliefs related to ideal

and/or future strategic emphasis. Conventional wisdom in

strategic management holds that such differences in man-

agerial cognitions lead to higher-quality strategic deci-

sions, and thus to enhanced firm performance. However,

4 decades of empirical research have not provided consis-

tent findings or clear insights into the effects of strategic

dissent. Hence, we analyze the relative validity of predic-

tions about these effects from both social psychological

theories of group behavior and information processing

perspectives on decision-making. Then, we conduct a

meta-analytic path analysis (MASEM) based on current

empirical evidence. Synthesizing data from 78 articles,

we put to rest the notion that strategic dissent leads to

positive outcomes for organizations and estimate how

negative its effects actually are.

Managerial summary:Top management teams (TMTs)

set the tone and direction for their firms in important

ways. Top managers, however, often disagree over funda-

mental issues related to strategy. Such strategic dissent

affects how important decisions are made, and thus how

the firm performs. In more specific terms and contrary to

popular belief, strategic dissent creates not only dysfunc-

tional relationships among top managers, but also disrupts

the process by which these managers exchange, discuss,

and integrate information and ideas in making strategic

decisions. In short, firms have not yet generated value

through numerous perspectives, ideas, and opinions

among their top managers. We discuss interventions that

could prove helpful in efforts to benefit from having

diverse cognitions in a TMT.

Received: 31 October 2016 Revised: 18 July 2017 Accepted: 21 July 2017 Published on: 26 October 2017

DOI: 10.1002/smj.2710

Strat Mgmt J. 2018;39:379–402. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 379

KEYWORDS

cognitive conflict, cognitive diversity, meta-analysis,

strategic decision-making, top management teams

1|INTRODUCTION

In many firms, the top management team (TMT) is the center of decision-making (Hambrick, 2007;

Hambrick, Humphrey, & Gupta, 2015; Hambrick & Mason, 1984). As such, this important team has

been linked to various organizational outcomes, such as growth (e.g., Channon, 1979), strategic

dynamism (e.g., Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007), and financial performance (e.g., Hambrick & Can-

nella, 2004). Important for our purposes, top managers are essentially information workers

(McCall & Kaplan, 1985), who bring together expertise from different domains in order to support

organizational performance. However, their varying information sources and perspectives often

cause substantial disagreements regarding the firm’s strategic positioning. Indeed, each manager

might favor goals and strategies based solely on his or her values and preferences (Finkelstein &

Hambrick, 1996). To complicate matters, TMTs typically exhibit greater reciprocal interdependence

and longevity in comparison to other work teams (Boerner, Linkohr, & Kiefer, 2011; Carpenter,

2002). Such dynamics likely cause disagreements among top managers to be more impactful, which

makes the TMT particularly interesting as a focal point for a study on the firm outcomes of dissent.

In formal terms, strategic dissent is conceptualized as divergence in ideas, preferences and

beliefs related to ideal and/or future strategic emphases (Amason, 1996; Miller, Burke, & Glick,

1998). In essence, strategic dissent refers to differences concerning what the strategy should be,

rather than what it is (cf. Dess, 1987; Miller et al., 1998).

1

For strategy process research, important

theoretical arguments have connected strategic dissent to organizational outcomes, with the most

popular and dominant perspective suggesting that strategic dissent is a positive force for strategic

decision-making and, thus indirectly, for firm performance (Appendix S1 in File S1).

Theoretically, dissent sets the stage for surfacing and combining unique pieces of information

and insights (Hoever, van Knippenberg, van Ginkel, & Barkema, 2012; van Knippenberg, De

Dreu, & Homan, 2004; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). It promotes careful consideration of a

diverse array of possible courses of action in the context of strategic decision-making (Bantel &

Jackson, 1989; Glick, Miller, & Huber, 1993; Miller et al., 1998). These processes, in turn, yield

higher-quality strategic decisions and better firm performance. At the same time however, strategic

dissent creates troublesome violations of the basic assumptions of classical decision theory

1

Strategic dissent is not the opposite of strategic consensus. Consensus, which is also concerned with managerial differences in cogni-

tion, is a vibrant area of research for both strategy and organizational theorists (e.g., Dess, 1987; Ensley & Pearson, 2005; see Keller-

manns, Walter, Floyd, Lechner, & Shaw, 2011 for a recent meta-analysis establishing the performance outcomes of strategic

consensus). Consensus represents the degree to which TMT members agree on what the goals, strategies, and strengths of the firm

are. It is focused on strategy implementation (e.g., Amason, 1996; Kellermanns, Walter, Lechner, & Floyd, 2005) and is believed to

“improve coordination and cooperation after a decision is made, which leads to a more efficient strategy implementation and, hence,

enhanced organizational performance”(Kellermanns et al.,2011, p. 127). Strategic dissent, on the other hand, represents the degree

to which TMT members disagree on what the goals, strategies, and strengths of the firm should be. Dissent constitutes one of the

microfoundations of strategic problem formulation (Baer, Dirks, & Nickerson, 2013), in the sense that variety in how top managers

organize stimuli and filter information influences what is noticed, and thus responded to (Bogner & Barr, 2000).

380 SAMBA ET AL.