Unpacking Strategic Problem Formulation in Top Management Teams

Outlining the future of the organization is the primary function of the top management team (TMT). The TMT must have both a mechanism and a congruent context for devising innovative strategies. In this study we highlight strategic problem formulation as that mechanism and psychological safety as that context, and seek to address the following research question: What is the role of strategic problem formulation in organizational innovativeness? The answer to this question is long overdue, and in our attempt to answer it we first clarify the conceptualization and measurement of the strategic problem formulation construct. We develop a strategic problem formulation scale, and with a sample of 309 Norwegian TMTs, we study its relation to organizational innovativeness and the role of psychological safety as antecedent. Our findings reveal that strategic problem formulation mediates between psychological safety and …