Journal of Management & Organization (2021), 27, 235–238

doi:10.1017/jmo.2021.36

E D I TO R I A L

The Challenges of Strategic Leadership in Organizations

Timothy O’Shannassy
RMIT University, Graduate School of Business and Law, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
E-mail: [email protected]
Keywords: strategic leadership; entrepreneur; professional manager; applied psychology; sustainability

In this issue our Journal of Management & Organization articles are grouped under the broad
umbrella of strategic leadership, with the research presented here undertaken in a range of
contexts. Strategic leaders include chief executive officers, company directors, and top managers
(Simsek, Jansen, Minichilli & Escriba-Esteve, 2015) leading middle line managers and the wider
organization workforce to deliver shareholder and stakeholder value (O’Shannassy, 2016).
Strategic leaders are charged with critical choices to facilitate transfer of information, influence
and resources with implications for organization performance (Simsek, Heavey & Fox, 2018).
The effective work of strategic leaders plays a key role in enhancing the well-being of society
and delivering sustainable triple bottom line economic, environmental and social outcomes
(Collier & Evans, 2020). Economic sustainability considers the ongoing financial viability and
solvency of the firm, environmental sustainability the firm’s commitment to environmental
quality, social sustainability the health and well-being of organization stakeholders and the
community (Collier & Evans, 2020). These sustainable organization outcomes are wide-ranging
and can include as examples job creation, indigenous employment outcomes, firm profit, quality
of financial institution loan portfolios, better community healthcare, air quality, water quality and
protecting the environment (O’Shannassy, 2015). This is why better understanding of strategic
leadership in organizations is important to business, society and the planet.
Strategic leadership work itself includes goal and objective setting, resourcing and develop-
ment of capabilities, market-orientation and commercialization choices, fostering innovation, set-
ting the cultural and values climate for the organization, and workforce engagement (Fitzroy,
Hulbert and O’Shannassy, 2016). The collection of 10 articles in this issue here discuss these mat-
ters and overall add insight into how organizations can be managed better to be more sustainable.
The empirical research in this issue takes place in a variety of settings including small and
medium size enterprises (SMEs), including a family enterprise SME, and in big business with
a wide range of qualitative and quantitative sources of data put to use. A common theme that
emerges across the articles is the importance of the selection, nurturing and retention of firm
resources and capabilities - especially ‘soft’, intangible human resources and capabilities
(Fitzroy et al., 2016).
We begin with a teaching case study of strategic leadership in an entrepreneurial setting ‘Walk
tall: The story of Rex Bionics’ by Woods, Callagher & Jaffray (2021), explaining the development
of Rex Bionics and the roles played by founders Richard Little and Robert (Robbie) Irving. Rex
Bionics has had to navigate a tough and at times difficult commercialization pathway for their
technology-based product, the walking robotic exoskeleton. The evolution of the role of the
founders in this entrepreneurial start-up, the challenge of public listing on the London AIM
Stock Exchange, and difficult moments with the board of directors, the advisory board and
the investment community on this journey are discussed.
Next Bensemann, Warren and Anderson (2021) in ‘Entrepreneurial engagement in a depleted
small town: Legitimacy and embeddedness’ study the impact of an entrepreneur’s practice in the

© Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2021.

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236 Timothy O’Shannassy

small North Island New Zealand town Stanton, with special focus on social perception and social
impact. Method is a single case study with the data obtained from semi-structured interviews
with 20 respondents, observation and historical research. Media reports business and government
internet sites provide useful background data that helped to inform development of the semi-
structured interview design. Legitimacy of the local ‘hero’ entrepreneur Sue varies on perspective
in the results, with some in the community embracing the positive economic impact while others
perceived Sue as a rival and change agent. The paper challenges the view that the legitimacy of the
entrepreneur should be grounded in economic success.
In the third article titled ‘Supplementing Q-method with narratives: Contextualizing CEOs’
values for family firms’, Pötschke (2021) studies CEO value orientation in the entrepreneurial
context of family business. Qualitative methods used include the Q-sorts technique and narrative
interviews with data from 16 CEOs. There is an interaction that takes place in the analysis with
the Q-sorts technique applying statistical analysis to qualitative data to gain understanding of
value patterns; next the narrative interviews are analysed to understand the contextualization
and interpretation of values. Family business settings are characterized by the distinct blend of
need for business objectivity with the intimacy of family relationships and the family social sys-
tem. This ‘soft’, family, people-oriented style of managing family business and the uniqueness of
this to each family makes CEO values in this setting interesting and important.
Our next paper from Tian, Lo and Zhai (2021) titled ‘Combining efficiency and innovation to
enhance performance: Evidence from firms in emerging economies’ uses a World Bank dataset
with a sample of 20,000 plus firms from 36 emerging economies to investigate the influence of
resource efficiency and innovation on firm performance. The focus of the study is extending
understanding of resource capabilities required for a firm to compete effectively in an emerging
economy setting. Typically in this setting firms suffer with a lack of efficiency management prac-
tices due to emerging economy isolation, and at the bottom end of the market there can a number
of very badly managed organizations. The results find that efficiency capabilities and innovation
capabilities are positively related to productivity which is in turn related to financial performance.
A combined approach to synthesis capabilities positively correlates to productivity which predicts
financial performance. Productivity plays a strong mediation role in the study.
The next article is a theory paper from Bridge (2021) titled ‘Facing uncertainty: An entrepre-
neurial view of the future?’ who suggests there are two main options for the strategic leader when
confronted by uncertainty. First ‘left brain’ planning and forecasting using a rational analytic
approach. Second is exploration and ‘trial and error’. The merits and challenges of each approach
are discussed, touching on the space in which Henry Mintzberg made his contribution three dec-
ades previously in his classic work (Mintzberg, 1994; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel, 1998). So
what is unique, new and different here about Bridge (2021)? Bridge (2021) reflects on the phil-
osophy that informs choice of the options that managers have for coping with uncertainty,
including the ‘right-brain’ versus ‘left-brain’ trade-off in strategy-making discussed at length by
Mintzberg (1998). Bridge (2021) draws on a wide academic literature including anecdotes and
stories from economic, business and political history to inform his arguments.
Ogbeiwi (2021) then moves this issue forward in his article ‘General concepts of goals and
goal-setting in healthcare: A narrative review’ undertaking a literature review on goal-setting
and the principles of goal-setting with focus on work planning and assessment in the healthcare
sector. Ogbeiwi (2021) observes that there is a massive literature here from the past 40 years
providing an opportunity to undertake review and synthesis to inform future research and prac-
tice. Key findings include the insight that goal-setting has a change orientation, is problem-based,
and has the potential to be motivating if the statement of goals developed uses the SMART
(i.e. specific and challenging) framework, however there is varied understanding of the definition
for SMART in health program practice.
Next Bäcklander, Rosengren and Kaulio (2021) discuss self-leadership practices among
knowledge workers in Denmark in the paper titled ‘Managing intensity in knowledge work:

https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.36 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Journal of Management & Organization 237

Self-leadership practice among Danish management consultants.’ Management consulting is a

knowledge-intensive business practiced by highly educated workers whose major skill is handling
and producing information. Knowledge intensity is reliant on the creativity of the worker, the
professional judgement of the worker, and close interaction with clients. Work intensity results
from a blend of a results focus, poor control of quantitative load, vagueness of task, and no
work boundaries. In this study two in-depth semi-structured focus group interviews were under-
taken with management consultants from a firm with 16 employees. The study results indicate
that management consultants communicated a confidence in internal self-discipline approaches
that were more reactive, however external and proactive approaches were more effective.
The final three articles here take an applied psychology approach to the challenges of the stra-
tegic leader. This applied psychology focus brings attention to this social sustainability of organ-
izational life perspective - the health and well-being of the worker, the work team and the
workplace in the three articles that follow.
Ng, Zhang and Chen (2021) add to the stress literature in their study of the antecedents of
abusive supervision in the workplace titled ‘A stress perspective on antecedents of abusive super-
vision: Blaming the organisation when exhausted supervisors abuse’. A convenience sample of
workplace supervisors studying in a part-time Master of Business Administration program in
South China were asked to choose subordinates in their workplace to participate in the study.
The survey yielded responses from 95 supervisors and 358 workplace subordinates. Path analysis
is used to test a moderated mediation model. In the results perceived workplace competitiveness
caused supervisor stress and psychological strain, which gave rise to abusive supervision. An
atmosphere of error aversion strengthened this positive relationship between perceived workplace
competitiveness and supervisor stress. Strong perceived organizational sanctions to aggression
mitigated the positive correlation between supervisor psychological strain and abusive supervi-
sion. The results show the importance of workplace constraints on the atmosphere of the work-
place to encourage a more harmonious work environment.
Next De Clercq, Sun & Belausteguigoitia (2021) in ‘When is job control most useful for idea
championing? Role conflict and psychological contract violation effects’ use conservation of
resources theory to underpin theory development on job control, idea championing, role conflict
and psychological contract violation. The sample is from a Mexican-based firm operating in the
chemical sector yielding a total of 157 responses from a random sample of 200 employees at dif-
ferent levels of the organization, giving a response rate of 79%. Descriptive statistics, bivariate cor-
relations and moderated multiple regression is used for the analysis. In the results job control is
found to encourage idea championing when role conflict and idea championing are strong, how-
ever this relationship is weaker when idea championing and role conflict are low. Idea champion-
ing should be encouraged when employees confront difficult work conditions including
unfulfilled employer obligations or incompatible job role expectations.
Finally Dawkins, Marin, Scott, Sanderson and Schüz (2021) in ‘A cross-level model of team
psychological capital (PsyCap) and individual- and team-level outcomes’ conduct a multi-level
study of team-level psychological capital (PsyCap) and a range of team-level and individual-level
outcomes including job satisfaction and turnover intent. Hierarchical two-level modelling is used
to test cross-level and individual-level hypotheses. In the results there are significant relationships
between team-level PsyCap and team-level outcomes including satisfaction and performance.
There are also significant relationships between team-level PsyCap and individual-level outcomes
including job satisfaction and turnover intent. The overall conclusion is that team-level positive-
ness can assist better team-level and individual-level outcomes in the workplace.
In sum, the articles further advance knowledge on how to resolve the challenges of strategic
leadership (Simsek et al., 2015), and deliver sustainable organization outcomes (Collier &
Evans, 2020). This is done from a range of theoretical perspectives including entrepreneurship
theory, strategic leadership and applied psychology. There is an interesting blend of theory
paper, literature review, qualitative interview-based research, qualitative single case study, and

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238 Timothy O’Shannassy

quantitative research that reflect the broad and diverse range of interests of Journal of
Management & Organization and the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management
community. Echoing Galvin (2014) there remains room for more context-specific research in
indigenous environments in all international contexts in this journal to contribute to global man-
agement and organization knowledge; as a community of scholars it is desirable that we inform
the work of indigenous managers, accommodating a broad and diverse range of theory develop-
ment and research methods.

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Cite this article: O’Shannassy T (2021). The Challenges of Strategic Leadership in Organizations. Journal of Management &
Organization 27, 235–238. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.36

https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2021.36 Published online by Cambridge University Press