We draw on upper echelons theory to examine whether the AI literacy of a firm’s top management team (i.e., TMT AI literacy) has an effect on two firm characteristics paramount for value generation with AI—a firm’s AI orientation, enabling it to identify AI value potentials, and a firm’s AI implementation ability, empowering it to realize these value potentials. Building on the notion that TMT effects are contingent upon firm contexts, we consider the moderating influence of a firm’s type (i.e., startups vs. incumbents). To investigate these relationships, we leverage observational literacy data of 6986 executives from a professional social network (LinkedIn.com) and firm data from 10-K statements. Our findings indicate that TMT AI literacy positively affects AI orientation as well as AI implementation ability and that AI orientation mediates the effect of TMT AI literacy on AI implementation ability. Further, we show that the effect of TMT AI literacy on AI implementation ability is stronger in startups than in incumbent firms. We contribute to upper echelons literature by introducing AI literacy as a skill-oriented perspective on TMTs, which complements prior role-oriented TMT research, and by detailing AI literacy’s role for the upper echelons-based mechanism that explains value generation with AI.

我们利用高层理论来考察企业高层管理团队的人工智能素养（即TMT人工智能素养）是否对人工智能价值创造至关重要的两个企业特征产生影响——企业的人工智能导向，使其能够识别人工智能价值潜力，以及公司的人工智能实施能力，使其能够实现这些价值潜力。基于 TMT 效应取决于公司环境的观点，我们考虑了公司类型（即初创企业与现有企业）的调节影响。为了调查这些关系，我们利用了来自专业社交网络 (LinkedIn.com) 的 6986 名高管的观察素养数据和来自 10-K 报表的公司数据。我们的研究结果表明，TMT 人工智能素养正向影响人工智能取向和人工智能实施能力，并且人工智能取向介导 TMT 人工智能素养对人工智能实施能力的影响。此外，我们还发现，TMT 人工智能素养对初创企业人工智能实施能力的影响比现有企业更强。我们通过引入人工智能素养作为 TMT 的技能导向视角来为高层文献做出贡献，这补充了之前以角色为导向的 TMT 研究，并详细说明了人工智能素养在解释人工智能价值生成的基于高层的机制中的作用。