Abstract:

Standards-focused competition constitutes a crucial avenue through which firms sustain their competitive advantage. Drawing on the upper-echelons theory and the resource-based view， and using the panel data of the Chinese listed industrial firms from 2009 to 2023， the regression analysis is employed to examine how top-management-team （TMT） characteristics affect firms’ participation in national standards. The results indicate that the educational level of TMT shows no significant effect on participation in national standards， whereas tenure， market experience， and academic experience all exert significant positive effect. Industries’ technological level strengthens the positive effect of tenure， and industrial competition attenuates the impact of market experience while strengthening that of academic experience. Compared with prior university teaching or research-institute positions， academic executives’ experience gained in professional associations more effectively boosts their participation in national standards. Moreover， tenure reinforces the long-term orientation of market-experienced executives， and this effect is further intensified by industries’ technological level. These findings may provide useful references for firms to formulate standards-focused competition strategies.

Key words: TMT characteristics, national standard, industries’ technological level, industrial competition