Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is concerned with studying the characteristics and actions of top organizational leaders—those individuals who are tasked with formulating and implementing the firm’s strategy—and the associated strategic and performance implications. Strategic leadership is rather loosely defined, with no agreed-upon definition to date. Most scholars of strategic leadership agree, however, that strategic leaders include the chief executive officer (CEO) and other non-CEO top executives (sometimes referred to as the CEO’s top team). As such, studies within this stream focus on the CEO alone, the entire top management team (TMT), or the interactions between the CEO and the TMT (sometimes referred to as the CEO-TMT interface). The TMT is generally defined as the CEO’s direct subordinates, or all executives at the level of vice president or above (sometimes referred to as the C-level; for instance, chief financial officer); however, the size of the TMT can vary significantly across organizations. Some scholars choose to include boards of directors in their conceptualization of strategic leadership, recognizing the board’s important advisory, monitoring, and resource provision roles. Because boards of directors are more frequently studied and included in the realm of corporate governance, this article excludes them from review. While research on strategic leadership is a major area within strategy, it often draws from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, organizational economics, and organizational behavior. The resultant literature is broad and diverse, reflecting different theoretical perspectives. In this article, we first introduce a number of relevant textbooks and handbooks, followed by a discussion of key theories in the area. Next, we discuss specific streams of research within the literature on strategic leadership. We conclude with a brief review of the literature on executive succession (i.e., the transition of decision-making responsibilities between different leaders or sets of leaders).