The top team, trust, reflexivity, knowledge sharing and innovation

In the present study, we develop a model to predict market innovation drawing from literature on top management teams (TMT). We hypothesize that diversity and trustworthiness in the TMT should influence knowledge sharing and reflexivity such that reflexivity and knowledge sharing would be positively associated with innovation. Results indicate that age diversity was positively related to knowledge sharing ability while educational level, tenure and functional diversity of the TMT did not have any direct effect on reflexivity, knowledge sharing ability or motivation. However, educational level, tenure and age diversity of TMT had indirect effects on reflexivity and knowledge sharing through the intervening variable of TMT trustworthiness. Further, knowledge-sharing and task reflexivity had direct effects on market innovation. Implications for research and practice are discussed.