2 IN SEARCH FOR STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
2.1 INTRODUCTION
“Organizations are the common tie that binds management researchers”
(Molloy et al., 2011, p.584).Podolny et al. (2005) observed WKDW³IRUDWOHDVWWKHSDVWWKLUW\\HDUVWKHFRQFHSWRIOHDGHUVKLSKDV
been subject to criticism and marginalization by the dominant organizational paradigms and
SHUVSHFWLYHV ́(p.1). Part of this skepticism has resulted from questions about whether leadership has
discernible effects on organizational outcomes (Pfeffer, 1977). Underlying reason may be that
leadership theories tend to emphasize interpersonal, face-to-face relationships instead of focusing on
organizational problems (Dubin, 1979). Traditional leadership approaches usually start by discussing
individuals and what they do (Bass, 1990a; Yukl, 2002) as if they almost exclusively operate in
conventional organizations. In contrast, many macro perspectives start with organizations and what
they need to do as if average individuals populated them. One might think of these as a slightly less
extreme version of the well-NQRZQ³SHRSOHZLWKRXWRUJDQL]DWLRQVYVRUJDQLzations without people³
(Osborn et al., 2002, p.799) arguments in the organizational studies¶ field.
Leadership is presumed to have an effect not just on individuals but also on teams, and sometimes
even on entire organizations (Kaiser et al., 2008). Leadership enables followers to be motivated and
perform, but also small teams to synergize, and organizations to accomplish goals through the
differentiated yet synchronized efforts of these individuals and teams (DeChurch et al., 2010). As
such, leadership is an inherently multilevel phenomenon (Dansereau et al., 1984; Yammarino et al.,
2005). Organizational effectiveness hinges on coordinated leadership being enacted from leaders
residing within multiple hierarchical levels, whose leadership shapes crucial individual-, team-, and
organizational-level outcomes. Despite this reality, research on leadership often seems disconnected
(Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001) owing at least in part to separate disciplinary groups which guide theory
and research on leadership at different levels; for example, organizational-level leadership research is
generally the province of business scholars, whereas lower-level managerial leadership research has a
strong grounding in psychology (DeChurch et al., 2010).