Abstract Political behavior pervades strategic decision-making, often damaging decision quality and undermining organizational performance. However, little is currently known about how top management teams (TMTs) cope with such behavior. To address this shortfall, we draw on the upper echelons literature to advance a contingent account of the factors that differentiate well-functioning and dysfunctional TMTs. Focusing on the psychological context surrounding the TMT, we theorize that cognitive consensus, power decentralization, and behavioral integration are key generative mechanisms that enable TMTs to countermand the potentially deleterious consequences of political behavior. We corroborate our theorizing using a field study of 117 strategic decisions, drawn from multiple TMT informants and secondary databases. Confirming the majority of our hypotheses, our findings indicate that behaviorally integrated and decentralized TMTs are better equipped to attenuate the potentially damaging effects of organizational politics, thereby safeguarding the quality of their decision processes.

中文翻译：

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政治行为并不（总是）破坏战略决策：理论和证据

摘要 政治行为普遍存在于战略决策中，往往会损害决策质量并破坏组织绩效。然而，目前对高层管理团队 (TMT) 如何应对此类行为知之甚少。为了解决这一不足，我们利用上层文献来推进对区分功能良好和功能失调的 TMT 的因素的偶然解释。关注围绕 TMT 的心理背景，我们认为认知共识、权力下放和行为整合是关键的生成机制，使 TMT 能够抵制政治行为的潜在有害后果。我们通过对 117 项战略决策的实地研究证实了我们的理论，这些决策来自多个 TMT 线人和二级数据库。