"Management team" is a horrible pair of words. I suspect this was submitted as a protest of the inability to downvote submissions.
Once you start talking about "the management team", you've created a company run with an "us vs. them" mentality and that ruins the culture over time, because the people actually doing the work are a "them". It's not something that happens only at scale. I was recently at a startup infested with this mentality at under 100 people.
Management is a function. It's work that needs to be done, like administration. Drawing lines within the company is one way to end up with a horrible culture as people try to cross or control the line. Ultimately, as soon as you have a company where people succeed or fail based on their ability to control the division of labor, your culture will tend inexorably toward corporate grey goo, no matter how good your company's original intentions were.
You'll have noticed in life that every point has a counter point. In this case it's Microsoft. Specifically Steve Sinofsky's approach to managing delivery of Windows 7 and 8. For some insight, read his book (One Strategy).
Microsoft talk about a leadership team, rather than a management team.
The problem isn't in defining what management is. The problem is in founders not understanding or knowing how to manage. This is a result of inexperience and the youthful tendency to ignore others' (especially experienced others') advice.
Once you start talking about "the management team", you've created a company run with an "us vs. them" mentality and that ruins the culture over time, because the people actually doing the work are a "them". It's not something that happens only at scale. I was recently at a startup infested with this mentality at under 100 people.
Management is a function. It's work that needs to be done, like administration. Drawing lines within the company is one way to end up with a horrible culture as people try to cross or control the line. Ultimately, as soon as you have a company where people succeed or fail based on their ability to control the division of labor, your culture will tend inexorably toward corporate grey goo, no matter how good your company's original intentions were.