items were generated. Hence, in total the strategic leadership measurement was expanded with four
items, including one extra item per dimension. The items added were the following:
Business development: makes clients aware of other company products and services on offer.
Operational efficiency: plans in detail how to accomplish an important task.
Client centricity: creates trust with clients and partners.
Organizational creativity: persuasively sells new ideas in the organization.
In turn, the strategic leadership measurement instrument used in this chapter (and the following
chapters) included 20 items (5 items per dimension) (for the items included in the online survey see
Appendix I).
Transformational Leadership
In the conceptual part of this dissertation, strategic leadership was presented as distinct from
supervisory leadership. In order to test this proposition, the strategic leadership model was tested
against transformational leadership. A commonly used scale to measure transformational leadership is
the scale developed by Rafferty and Griffin (2004). This scale consists of five 3-item subscales:
Vision (Į=.78), Inspirational communication (Į=.75), Intellectual stimulation (Į=.79), Supportive
leadership (Į=.82) and personal recognition (Į=.79). 7ZR H[HPSODU\ GHVFULSWLRQV DUH ³KDV D FOHDU
XQGHUVWDQGLQJRIZKHUHWKHRUJDQL]DWLRQLVJRLQJ ́ 9LVLRQ DQG³3HUVRQDOO\FRPSOLPHQWVPHZKHQ,
do outstanding woUN ́ 3HUVRQDOUHFRJQLWLRQ
Organizational Level
Although there is consistency in the use of three organizational levels (Hunt & Ropo, 1995; Zaccaro,
2001), researchers do not agree on a common definition for organizational level (Hunt, 1991; Jaques,
1976). The operational definition of lower-level, middle and top-level management varies
considerably across organizational settings (Dutton & Ashford, 1993; Floyd & Wooldridge, 1992).
The proxy that has been adopted in this study has been used in previous studies in order to identify
organizational levels (Finkelstein, 1992; Frey & Kucher, 2002). The focal managers were asked to
select an option for the number of subordinates that were reporting to them, choosing amongst the
options 1 to 10, 11 to 49 and 50 subordinates. A deliberate choice was made to ask for the number of
subordinates, instead of the number of direct reports. Although top-level managers may have plenty of
subordinates (that is organizational members, working at a lower level in the organizational hierarchy,
these top-level managers may only have a few direct reports. Next to this precaution, the self-given