their leadership style influence both their subordinates and organizational outcomes. ³The interaction
of the two types of leadership (strategic and supervisory) would clearly bear considerDEOH VWXG\ ́
(Schendel, 1989, p.2).
2.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS & RESEARCH STRUCTURE
From the introductory chapters, one can conclude that the primary aspects that will be addressed in
this dissertation, is the concept of strategic leadership, to what extent it is different from supervisory
leadership in terms of the concept as such, its manifestation and effectiveness across organizational
levels and its applicability to team effectiveness.
This dissertation aims to answer four research questions.
I. To what extent are the concepts of supervisory and strategic leadership distinct?
This research question is relevant in order to establish the added value of conceptualizing and
operationalizing a new strategic leadership model. Supervisory and strategic leadership are
conceptualizations of leadership at different levels of analysis. Whereas supervisory leadership is
played out at the leader-follower level, strategic leadership is aimed at the level of the organizational
system in interaction with its environment. These two conceptualizations of leadership have been kept
apart by means of disciplinary boundaries, i.e. supervisory leadership being embedded in the
psychology discipline and strategic leadership originating from the field of strategic management.
These disciplinary traditions have remained separate; there is however no empirical evidence whether
the two concepts can be identified as distinct.
II. Is leadership manifested differentially across organizational levels?
The extent to which organizational level is still an important antecedent for the manifestation and
effectiveness of strategic and supervisory leadership is an unsettled concern. The term strategic
leadership emerged as the responsibility of the top management team. Yet, more and more researchers
argue that strategic leadership is an ability which needs to be manifested by members at all
organizational levels (normative claim). Likewise, even though evidence on supervisory leadership
stems from studies on lower-level managers, top-level managers also have subordinates they need to
motivate. The topic of how top-level managers motivate their subordinates (which are middle
managers) has remained largely unexplored. Moreover, if the manifestation of strategic and
supervisory leadership behaviors shows a different relationship with organizational level, this would
further support the argument that the concepts are distinct. Moreover, answering this research question