Abstract

     Strategic leadership is a rich yet fragmented area of research. To address this gap, this article aims to consolidate and provide a state-of-the-art overview of strategic leadership research. To achieve its aim, this article conducts a bibliometric-temporal analysis of strategic leadership using bibliometric data of relevant literature available through Scopus, the largest scientific database for review endeavors. Using 6024 documents of strategic leadership research identified and retrieved from Scopus, this article reveals the performance (e.g., year, article, journal, author, country) and science (e.g., topics, themes) of strategic leadership research across four decades. Noteworthily, strategic leadership is inherently grounded in digital transformation, innovation, and the upper echelons, with a growing footprint that spans across basic management and organizational activities; competitive advantage capabilities and strategies; the multiple roles of managers; the leadership, innovative, and strategic functions of management and upper echelons, including those specific to top management teams; the strategic leader; strategic choices; strategic teams; as well as strategic succession. More importantly, the review herein this article, to the best knowledge of the authors, represents the largest consolidation effort and review of strategic leadership research using scientific methods adopted from information science in the form of a bibliometric-temporal analysis, and thus, providing a state of the art of strategic leadership.

Introduction

     Strategic leadership, in its simplest form, is leadership that manifests at the highest level of an organization, which includes the board of directors (BOD) and the members of the top management team (TMT), such as the c-suite (e.g., chief executive officer [CEO], chief financial officer [CFO], chief information officer [CIO], chief marketing officer [CMO], chief operating officer [COO], and chief sustainability officer [CSO]) as well as general managers (GMs) and leaders of strategic business units (SBUs). Yet, many complex definitions of strategic leadership exist (Boal and Hooijberg, 2000, Cannella et al., 2009, Rowe, 2001, Thompson, 1967, Vera and Crossan, 2004). The recent article by Samimi et al. (2022, p.3) shed light on such definitions, recognized the need to consolidate the complex definitions of strategic leadership, and proposed an encompassing definition that refers strategic leadership as “the functions performed by individuals at the top levels of an organization that are intended to have strategic consequences for the organization,” wherein such functions include “making strategic decisions, engaging with external stakeholders, performing human resource management activities, motivating and influencing, managing information, overseeing operations and administration, managing social and ethical issues, and managing conflicting demands.” When this definition is taken together with the range of leadership styles and values that may characterize strategic leaders (Carter & Greer, 2013), strategic leadership can be comprehensively described as leadership that is focused on strategic consequences (e.g., economic, environmental, social) for organizations (e.g., multinationals, small and medium enterprises), which can be driven by tasks that include but transcend beyond strategic visioning, encapsulating a wide range of high-level administrative (governance), engagement, innovation (improvement), operational, and supervisory tasks for an organization without being confined to any leadership style (e.g., authentic, autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic, transactional, transformational, servant) or value (e.g., self-regarding, other-regarding).

Conclusion

     This article delivers on its promise to unpack the bibliometric and intellectual structure of strategic leadership research over the period of four decades (1980–۲۰۲۰). Through its study, this article reaffirms the contention of past reviews that strategic leadership is a rich yet fragmented area of research and remedies the issue by consolidating and reviewing its literature through a scientific methodology predicated on a bibliometric-temporal analysis. In doing so, the state-of-the-art overview of strategic leadership herein reveals the performance (e.g., year, article, journal, author, country) and science (e.g., topics, themes) of strategic leadership since its research begun up to the most recent complete year at the time of review.