RESEARCH DESIGN
Conceptualization & operationalization of strategic leadership
At the heart of every set of strategic issues, a fundamental tension between apparent opposites can be
identified. This dissertation presents a conceptual model for strategic leadership on the basis of two
paradoxes, i.e. the paradox drawn from the strategic management literature between the (internal)
organization and the (external) environment and the paradox between exploration and exploitation
underlying the strategic leadership literature. Most if not all references to strategic leadership literature
revolve around the tension between long-term viability of the organization which is dependent on
exploring fundamentally new competencies, and short-term financial stability, which in turn is based
on the exploitation of current organizational capabilities.
The resulting strategic leadership model is composed of four quadrants, i.e. Organizational creativity,
Business development, Client centricity and Operational efficiency along the two dimensions
Exploration-Exploitation and Organization-Environment (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Strategic leadership modelThe diagonal quadrants (Organizational creativity versus Client centricity and Operational efficiency
and Business development) are in a paradoxical relationship and bear antithetical features to one
another. Solely, focusing on one of the quadrant would exacerbate the need for the other. In order to
test whether strategic leadership could be measured and the extent to which strategic leadership is
different from supervisory leadership, both in concept and in application, the four quadrants of the