7 VALIDATION OF STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP MEASUREMENT
7.1 INTRODUCTION
The previous chapter resulted in a measurement for strategic leadership. Nonetheless, several
questions still remain, like how stable is the strategic leadership model when using a different sample
and how distinct is strategic leadership from supervisory leadership. The purpose of this chapter is
three-fold. The first objective was to increase the content validity of the strategic leadership
measurement by increasing the number of items and confirming the four-factor structure within a
different sample. The second objective was to show the discriminant validity of strategic leadership
vis-à-vis a widely-used supervisory leadership concept, i.e. transformational leadership. 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. And the third objective was to assess
the relevance of organizational level for the manifestation of strategic and supervisory leadership. 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. Additionally, answering this research
question is an important step in bridging the gap between the trend to organize horizontally and the
leadership literature holding on to a stark demarcation between organizational levels.