This chapter traces the evolution of economic perspectives on organizational behavior and the role of top management. Beginning with early behavioral approaches that positioned senior executives as central to strategic decision-making, the neoclassical paradigm displaced this view by reducing firms to passive “black boxes” and treating managers as interchangeable inputs. New Institutional Economics partially countered this reductionism by highlighting institutional environments, yet similarly constrained managerial influence through isomorphic pressures and agency-theoretic governance mechanisms. Behavioral economics broke decisively with these assumptions, foregrounding bounded rationality, organizational coalitions, and iterative decision-making as key drivers of firm behavior. Building on these foundations, Upper Echelons Theory formalized the link between executives' cognitive frameworks and organizational outcomes, establishing top management as a legitimate and consequential unit of analysis, and has since expanded its reach into accounting and finance research.