The Importance Of Strategic Leadership

The changing landscape of today 's global economy of the 21st century, lends itself to competition, challenging and fraught with competitive opportunities and threats in organizations. To cope with the growing international demand and brought about change, in the 1980s leadership scholars has shifted ‘supervisory leadership’ to ‘strategic leadership’. Since then strategic leadership is increasingly becoming the main focus for business and academics alike and is the key issue facing contemporary organizations. (Yukul, 2010)

Strategic leadership is a person 's ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically and work with others to initiate changes that will create a viable future for the organization (Wendy Lear, 2012).

As opposed to other styles of leadership it emphasized on how top leaders undertake decisions in the short term without affecting the long-term viability of the sector. During its first consecutive two decades the field has experienced both metamorphosis and rejuvenation. Hence, in line with this, the essence of strategic leadership involves the capacity to learn and to change, as well as under what conditions, how and when strategic leadership matters. Pazireh, Akhlagh, & Akbari,

According to some authors, “organizations are a reflection of their top leaders”.Phipps, 2012 p177 Strategic leadership is contrasted with supervisory leadership. Strategic leaders focus on creating organizational meaning and purpose whereas supervisory leaders focus on guiding, directing, and supporting subordinates.One of the early dominant theories of strategic leadership was recognized as upper echelons theory. The fundamental tenant of the theory was that institutional outcomes were a mirror image of the top leader’s cognition and values. Likewise, besides cognition and values, strategic leadership take into account the leaders’ psychological makeup and contextual factors. Boal and Hooijberg (2001) as cited in Philipps,2012 p177 suggested that “the essence of strategic leadership is the creation and maintenance of an organization’s absorptive and adaptive capacity”. As Cannella and Monroe (1997) in Philipps,2012 p177 portrayed it, “strategic leadership theory asserts that top managers’ values, cognitions, and personalities affect their field of vision, their selective perception of information, and their interpretation of information.” Thus, it shades light on the decision making of executives. Despite the fact that the center of attention of the study is often on the executive, strategic leadership theory also recognizes that organizational outputs can be influenced greatly by a dominant combination