Behavioral integration and organizational dynamic capabilities: The mediating role of job demands

The extant research on organizational dynamic capabilities has identified various antecedents of these capabilities at the environmental, organizational, and managerial levels. However, drivers of dynamic capabilities at the top-management-team (TMT) level have received less attention. This is surprising as several conceptual papers hint to the relevance of interpersonal relations and social interactions between managers for the emergence of organizational dynamic capabilities. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of behavioral integration of the TMT as well as job demands as such drivers of organizational dynamic capabilities on the TMT level. Drawing on dynamic capabilities as well as TMT research, we argue that behavioral integration of the TMT fosters the development of organizational dynamic capabilities because of its positive effect on open information exchange and collaboration among TMT members. Additionally, we theorize that this positive effect of behavioral integration is conditional on its impact on job demands, as higher cognitive strain of top managers reduces their information exchange and collaboration, which might negatively affect the development of organizational dynamic capabilities. Thus, we argue that job demands mediate the relationship between behavioral integration and organizational dynamic capabilities. An empirical analysis involving 113 top managers from European engineering consulting firms supports our hypotheses. Our findings contribute to research on drivers of organizational dynamic capabilities.