Top Management Team Experiential Variety, Competitive Repertoires, and Firm Performance: Examining the Law of Requisite Variety in the 3D Printing Industry (1986–2017)

Abstract

This study develops and tests a thesis derived from the law of requisite variety. We contend that the greater the experiential variety of a top management team, the more likely it is that the complexity and consistency of the firm’s competitive repertoire will be calibrated to relevant external variety. In addition, for firms that achieve such calibrated repertoires, we expect that their financial performance will be superior to that of their peers. We then integrate these arguments and examine whether top management team experiential variety indirectly, through calibrated repertoires, contributes to firm performance. Analyzing hand-collected data for firms operating in the 3D printing industry over the past three decades (1986–2017), we find support for the overall thesis and associated hypotheses. The discussion section elaborates on the study’s contributions, limitations, and future research potential.