HESTER DUURSEMA

Strategic Leadership

Moving Beyond the Leader-follower Dyad

HESTER DUURSEMA - Strategic Leadership

ERIM PhD Series

Research in Management

Erasmus Research Institute of Management -

279

E R I M

Design & layout: B&T Ontwerp en advies (www.b-en-t.nl) Print: Haveka (www.haveka.nl)

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

MOVING BEYOND THE LEADER-FOLLOWER DYAD

Leadership is hot. In organizations all over the world – in conglomerates and new-

economy startups alike – the complaint emerges: We do not have enough leadership. A

search of Google.com returns 2.290 million hits for the word “leadership” alone, whilst

Amazon.com reveals 112.249 entries. And yet we need a different type of leadership than

how it is conceptualized today.

We are living today in a knowledge era, which is characterized by a competitive

landscape driven by globalization, technology, deregulation, and democratization. Many

organizations deal with this new landscape by allying horizontally, across organizational

boundaries. As such, the interaction of organizations with and amidst their environment

has become a crucial element for organizational vitality.

Leadership research however, is (still) largely embedded in the Industrial paradigm,

dominated by the tripod ontology of 1) the leader, 2) followers, and 3) goals. This

internally oriented tripod ontology suited the hierarchical structures of organizations and

the relatively placid environments that these organizations were operating in during that

time period. We call this type of leadership supervisory leadership.

There is however, a relatively recent leadership concept, strategic leadership, which

does consider the relationship between leadership and external organizational outcomes.

This concept has been conceptualized in terms of innate characteristics of top-level

managers. The underlying strategic leadership behaviors have not yet been identified.

Moreover, as strategic leadership goes beyond the leader-follower dyad, the notion opens

up possibilities for more persons participating in strategic leadership, so called shared

strategic leadership.

In short, this dissertation:

• provides a new conceptual model and measure for strategic leadership behavior


• provides insight into the manifestation of strategic leadership across organizational
  levels


• shows that teams benefit from shared strategic leadership

The Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) is the Research School (Onder -

zoek school) in the field of management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The founding

participants of ERIM are the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), and the Erasmus

School of Econo mics (ESE). ERIM was founded in 1999 and is officially accre dited by the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The research under taken by

ERIM is focused on the management of the firm in its environment, its intra- and interfirm

relations, and its busi ness processes in their interdependent connections.

The objective of ERIM is to carry out first rate research in manage ment, and to offer an

ad vanced doctoral pro gramme in Research in Management. Within ERIM, over three

hundred senior researchers and PhD candidates are active in the different research pro -

grammes. From a variety of acade mic backgrounds and expertises, the ERIM commu nity is

united in striving for excellence and working at the fore front of creating new business

knowledge.

Erasmus Research Institute of Management -

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM)

Erasmus School of Economics (ESE)

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR)

P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam,

The Netherlands

Tel. +31 10 408 11 82

Fax +31 10 408 96 40

E-mail [email protected]

Internet http://www.erim.eur.nl

Page 1; B&T13012_ERIM_omslag_Duursema_7feb