APA Writing Exercise 2
Abstract
Looking into the complexities of Strategic Leadership, we find that culture is the common thread
amongst many definitions. Three specific studies carried out by Ambilichu and his team,
Luciano's group, and Quansah with associates dive deeper into this idea—each highlighting a
unique aspect fostered through strategic leadership hinged on culture. Ambilichu centers on
cultivating exploratory environments as for Luciano's focus—it’s creativity at its core while
Quansah emphasizes leader accountability. The article by Ambilichu et al. stands out,
emphasizing the direct impact of strategic leadership on organizational culture and performance.
The application of these findings extends from top-level leaders to low-level managers,
emphasizing the importance of intentional leadership in shaping workplace culture. To conclude
no matter what an organization specializes in or size, the essence of strategic leadership lies in
creating and fostering a desired workplace culture, with the effectiveness of leadership directly
influencing organizational performance.
Keywords: Strategic Leadership, culture, organizational performance, direction,
organizational success
APA Writing Exercise 3
APA Writing Exercise
A young boy asks his basketball coach why he continues to be reminded to “play as a
team”, despite his being significantly better than all players on both teams. The coach struggles
with the answer and knows this is an opportunity to teach the young man a valuable lesson. Even
though the young boy could easily score more than enough points being a ball hog, the coach
explains the benefits of teamwork, individual growth, teammate growth, injuries, unforeseen
circumstances, or even a better future opponent. If the little boy does not learn the value of
teamwork, despite his team’s current success because of him, eventually his individual skill will
not be enough alone, and the team will fail because of him. This concept may seem obvious, but
when you really try to explain it, it can be challenging. Similarly, so, Strategic Leadership, is a
difficult concept to define. Some companies have the perfect product or rockstar employees, but
eventually those things alone may not be enough. Strategic leadership can speak of direction,
purpose, reasoning, vision, individuality, collectiveness, or many other concepts. It seems that
strategic leadership is only most accurately defined within the individual given organization it is
defining. Yet there seems to be a singular underlying principle or concept that runs through all
definitions of strategic leadership, culture. One way or another it seems all definitions of
strategic leadership speak to the specific, intentional, culture that is instilled into an organization.
How are they Similar?
Culture or environment is the underlying river that flows through most all definitions of
strategic leadership. Strategic leadership can look like many different things, it can be more firm
or more laid back. Sometimes it is more micro and other times its very hands off. Regardless of
the style of leadership, the best strategic leadership creates a specific, intentional culture of its
organization. Ambilichu et. al., speak to the correlation between the level of strategic leadership
APA Writing Exercise 4
influence and the correlating performance or “success” of the organization or firm (Ambilichu et.
al., 2023). For them strategic leadership is about the environment, or culture, that is fostered and
the level of creativity and exploration that is encouraged. They found that the more this type of
environment was encouraged, the higher performance the organization achieved. Luciano et. al.,
too center around a definition of strategic leadership that is concerned with the culture that is
fostered within an organization (Luciano et. al., 2020). Looking at both individual and group
creativity as a means of fostering higher performance. Finally, Quansah et. al., use a definition
that centers on a leader’s ability to think and lead, to ultimately create the change envisioned for
their organization, i.e. creating a culture (Quansah et. al., 2022). As you can see a common
ground amongst the defining of strategic leadership is focused on the culture that is intentionally,
or unintentionally, being created by said leadership.
How are they Different?
Although all three articles have a core of the culture created through strategic leadership,
they all have separate focuses in the specific mode and outcome of said leadership. Ambilichu et.
al., speak to strategic leadership to stimulate “exploitation and exploration activities and the
pursuit of both” (Ambilichu et. al., 2023). They found a direction correlation to strategic
leadership ability to foster that type of culture has a direct and predictable impact on an
organization perceived performance. Luciano et. al., take a slightly different viewpoint and see
the function of strategic leadership to focus on independent or interdependent creativity in the
workplace, depending on the need for (Luciano et. al., 2020). In their model, the effectiveness of
the tops strategic leadership effects performance of the organization by means of its creativity.
Finally, Quansah et. al., lean all in on the actual leader’s aspect and responsibility in strategic
leadership (Quansah et. al., 2022). They found that the concepts of strategic leadership my vary
APA Writing Exercise 5
in differently sized organizations, but ultimately, the responsibility falls on the intent and actions
of the leader to think and act strategically.
Which one Resonates?
The article by Ambilichu et. al., seems to be the most prominent and obvious. For them
strategic leadership has the most direct effect on the culture that is ultimately created and
encouraged within an organization. They were also able to make strong correlations to the
strength of that created culture and the measurable performance or success of the organization.
These were findings that remained true over a variety of sizes of organizations. Meaning that the
importance of created culture was scalable and holds true.
How does this Apply?
This applies rather obviously, as the role of strategic leadership most obviously applies to
the highest level of leaders. The culture they create dictates the performance of their
organization. Yet, the created culture and leadership responsibilities thereof, work their way
down to even the lowest level manager. This low-level leader must still, within the framework of
the established company culture, instill and ensure that their direct team is being led intentionally
and strategically with the same concepts and desired created culture.
Conclusion
Regardless of the size of the organization, regardless the type, or specific industry, the
core of strategic leadership rings the same. Leaders must think intentionally and act accordingly,
within the framework of their strategic leadership plan, to create and foster the type of
environment and ultimately culture that they want in their workplace. It does not matter what
type of culture you want to create within your organization, the effectiveness of your ability as a
strategic leader has a direct impact on that created culture. They focus on a culture that fosters
APA Writing Exercise 6
individual employee empowerment. That created culture has a direct and measurable impact on
the performance of your organization.
References
Ambilichu,EC.A., EOmoteso,EK.E&EEYekini,EL.S.E(2023)EEStrategic leadership and firm
performance: The mediating role of ambidexterity in professional services small- and
medium-sized enterprises.EEuropean Management Review,EE20(3),EE493–
511.Ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12548
Luciano, Margaret, M., Nahrgang, Jennifer, D., & Shropshire, Christine. (2020) Strategic
Leadership Systems: Viewing Top Management Teams And Boards Of Directors From A
Multiteam Systems Perspective. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 45, No. 3, 675-
701. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2017.0485
Quansah, E.,EMoghaddam, K.,ESolansky, S.EandEWang, Y.E(2022), "Strategic leadership in SMEs:
theEmediating role of dynamic capabilities",ELeadership & Organization Development
Journal, Vol. 43 No. 8, pp. 1308-1320.Ehttps://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2021-0229
APA Writing Exercise 7
Annotated Biliography
Ambilichu,EC.A., EOmoteso,EK.E&EEYekini,EL.S.E(2023)EEStrategic leadership and firm
performance: The mediating role of ambidexterity in professional services small- and
medium-sized enterprises.EEuropean Management Review,EE20(3),EE493–
511.Ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12548
Each of these authors reside in the UK and are professors at various schools of business in their
countries. Each has multiple scholarly articles written in the field of business. Ultimately this
article analyzes multiple organizations in the UK and determined that there is a direct influence
on organizational performance by its level of strategic leadership. This is by means of the culture
and environment that is created, the types of things that are allowed and encouraged. I would say
that the scholarly work of this article is adequate for this assignment, but I would enjoy seeing
this examination done again on a broader multinational scale. Although it is inferred that the
principles and concepts found apply universally, by this paper being limited to UK research, it is
potentially limited and biased in its findings. They were able to determine that strategic
leadership was positively related to firm performance. They found that the creativity of the
strategic leadership team positively impacted the organizational ability to be both explorative and
exploitative. Finally, they found that the firm’s ability to do both was what positively impacted
its performance. This study is very important for a strong understanding of strategic leadership
because it shows that the value and intention of the organization’s strategic leadership plan, will
undoubtedly have a direct impact on its performance. Of course, there will always be outliers,
but if an organization wants a recipe to success, it almost always will start at the top. To
paraphrase Uncle Ben from Spiderman, “with great organizational performance, comes great
leadership”.
APA Writing Exercise 8
Luciano, Margaret, M., Nahrgang, Jennifer, D., & Shropshire, Christine. (2020) Strategic
Leadership Systems: Viewing Top Management Teams And Boards Of Directors From A
Multiteam Systems Perspective. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 45, No. 3, 675-
701. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2017.0485
All three of the authors of this paper are either professors or associate professors at W.P. Carey
School of Business at Arizona State University. They each also hold a PhD in either management
or organizational behavior. Each of them has a research focus within the realm of team dynamics
or leadership and have written multiple scholarly papers on such topics. They are a very qualified
group of authors making this publication in the Academy of Management review a very good
quality article. This article fits well because although it acknowledges the correlation of strategic
leadership systems on the performance of the organization, it poses caution about said correlation
because of possible internal or external factors that could impact the outcomes. They offer a
perspective that navigates from the historical understanding of strategic leadership, about control
from the top to a newer understanding focused on independence and ultimately culture that is
created. They postulate that if the goal of the leadership team is high organizational performance,
then both independent and group tasks must be the focus. This focus is achieved by the emphasis
and freedoms created via the strategic culture. They go on to show that in a more applicational
viewpoint of their thesis, an organizations leadership team must assess what their goals are and
how they are structured. If the organization is more independent then the culture must be created
with that in mind, likewise, if it is more of a dynamic organization, then a more interdependency
culture must be fostered.
APA Writing Exercise 9
Quansah, E.,EMoghaddam, K.,ESolansky, S.EandEWang, Y.E(2022), "Strategic leadership in SMEs:
theEmediating role of dynamic capabilities",ELeadership & Organization Development
Journal, Vol. 43 No. 8, pp. 1308-1320.Ehttps://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2021-0229
This article places heavy emphasis on the responsibility, and vision, of the specific leader on the
strategic leadership process and ultimate successes. All four authors are from University’s in the
state of Texas, with Quansah, Moghaddam, and Wang all being from the University of Houston
and Solansky being from Texas State University. They all have written multiple articles inn the
realms of business, leadership, and management to name a few. They all appear to be well
credentialed to write on this subject. This article in the Leadership & Organization Development
Journal is well written and well sourced. They focus mainly on small to medium sized
organizations, though their findings likely scale to larger organizations as well, at least in
principle and concept when compared to other similar articles. The bottom-line up front of their
findings is that the more intentional the strategic leadership concept fosters a culture of employee
empowerment, the more success in performance metrics the organization will find. They use the
concept of a leader acting as a “great group leader” versus a “lone ranger” as the core of the
importance of the strategic leadership and culture building strategy. This is emphasized in an
ever evolving and ever growing remote and more independent work model, that we are seeing as
the chosen structure in more and more organizations these days, especially post pandemic. Due
to the more independent organizational model, they encourage a higher level of employee
involvement or input on the leadership structure, than maybe what was common or suggested in
years past.
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