Strategy and Leadership

Much of the existing strategic management literature tends to treat them as synonymous and to take an over-voluntarist view of how strategy is made and an over-heroic view of how organizations are led. Treating the concepts of strategy and leadership as separate yet inter-related, this book departs from the mainstream strategy and leadership literature in a number of ways. It sees the leader as only one of three main strategy-making variables. History and context are the other two. At the heart of this empirical study is the examination of how leadership, context and history interact over time. The 13 leaders featured in the study are viewed as "tenants of time and context" and their leadership is analyzed in terms of the historic challenges that faced them during their tenure at the top. This view of leadership deflects attention away from the pre-occupation with personal attributes and individual personae, to focus instead on the processes by which strategy is formed and organizational destinies shaped.