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
22
is an important step in bridging the gap between the trend to organize horizontally and the leadership literature holding on to a stark demarcation across organizational levels.
III. To what extent is leadership effectiveness (in terms of subordinate’ job satisfaction) moderated by organizational level?
The manifestation of behaviors does not tell us anything about the desirability of those behaviors at different organizational levels. There are two different perspectives on this. The continuity perspective posits that skills associated with leadership effectiveness at lower organizational levels are also important at higher organizational levels. In contrast, the discontinuity perspective theorizes that effective leadership behaviors at a certain organizational level can become ineffective for the next level. 6XERUGLQDWHả MRE VDWLVIDFWLRQ LV RQH RI WKH PRVW ZLGHO\ XVHG HIIHFWLYHQHVV PHDVXUHV LQ leadership research. A different impact of VWUDWHJLF DQG VXSHUYLVRU\ OHDGHUVKLS RQ VXERUGLQDWHả MRE satisfaction would once again further support the argument that these are two distinct concepts. Even PRUHDGLIIHUHQWLDOLPSDFWRQVXERUGLQDWHảMREVDWLVIDFWLRQDFURVVOHYHOVZRXOGEHDQLQGLFDWLRQRIWKH relative relevance of strategic and supervisory leadership across different organizational levels.
IV. To what extent does shared strategic leadership predict team effectiveness?
Strategic leadership is aimed at the interaction of the organization with its environment, hence the effectiveness measure cannot be captured merely by the internally oriented effectiveness measure of VXERUGLQDWHả MRE VDWLVIDFWLRQ Strategic leadership does not only surpass supervisory leadership in terms of levels of analysis (having an impact on team effectiveness), but potentially also in terms of unit of analysis. Within teams, there are two potential sources of leadership, which are defined by
³ZKR´HQJDJHVLQOHDGHUVKLS7KHILUVWVRXUFHWKHIRUPDOWHDPOHDGHUILWVWKHWULSRGRQWRORJ\DQGKDV received considerable attention and support in the literature. Leadership performed by the formal team leader has also been labeled vertical leadership, due to the hierarchical relationship between the team leader and the team members. The second source, the team, has been the focus of an emerging stream of research that views the team as a potential source of leadership, also labeled as shared leadership.
The leadership literature only recently took this alternative source of leadership seriously. Given the complexity of organizational environments and the burden on single leaders, this notion of shared strategic leadership requires further exploration.
The structure of the research is three-fold. Following the two introductory chapters, chapter 1 (on shared leadership) and chapter 2 (supervisory versus strategic leadership), Part I contains the three conceptual chapters, chapter three covering the relevance of organizational level in leadership
23 research, chapter four describing the evolution of leadership theory and chapter five presenting a conceptualization of strategic leadership (chapter 5). Part II presents the operationalization (chapter 6) of the strategic leadership model and validation of the measurement instrument (chapter 7). Part III presents two studies of application. In chapter 8, strategic and supervisory leadership are tested against VXERUGLQDWHả MRE VDWLVIDFWLRQat different organizational levels. Chapter nine elaborates on the application of the strategic leadership concept (vertical and shared) in explaining team effectiveness.
The function of the final chapter (chapter 10) is to wrap up and look forward. See Figure 2.2 for an overview of the research structure, with a clear demarcation between the theoretical and empirical chapters.
Figure 2-2: Research structure
24
25
PART I: CONCEPTUALIZATION
26
27
3 LEADERSHIP AT DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS