The “how” of Multiple Leader Sensegiving and Strategic Change (original) (raw)

The modern business environment is highly dynamic due to numerous forces that interact with each other to affect organizations. Firms respond to these changes resulting in change programs, which affect the whole organization as a system. This study focuses on the role of strategic leadership on successful change management and how strategic leaders ensure effective management of strategic change programs. The study employed survey research design with a sample of 173 respondents drawn from executive directors, senior managers and managers through stratified sampling who were picked by simple random sampling from airlines. Self-administered questionnaires and personal interviews were used as well as data from books, journals, periodicals, company reports, press releases and the internet. Data analysis was done using descriptive analysis (percentages, frequencies and averages) followed by data presentation on bar graphs and tables. The study concludes strategic leadership is ultimate ...

What leadership and strategic change capabilities are needed to manage through turbulent economic times? Firstly, there is the need of a leadership style that empowers the organisation, listens, executes swiftly and has constant focus to develop highly capable people. These leaders need to emotionally engage the entire organisation and act as facilitators. Secondly, in today’s environment, it is essential to revalue the role of middle management as one of strategic value. Leaders and middle managers need to embrace change as an interactive process, carefully balancing between operational and strategical activities. Thirdly, there is the need to see execution as an essential leadership skill. Far too many strategic initiatives do not deliver what promised.

Our longitudinal study of the sensemaking and responses to strategic change of the senior management team of a UK multinational subsidiary provides unusual data that enable us to explore the complexity of senior team change related sensemaking. We show senior teams to be distinct interpretive communities rather than one homogeneous category of change agents, as typically portrayed in change literature, who at times of center-led strategic change occupy a complex dual recipient/change agent role. By adopting a narrative approach, we show the shared sensemaking of such a team to be impacted by the locally differentiated nature of its interpretive and relational contexts, leading to context specific interpretations of center-led change and locally distinct responses, with consequences for change outcomes. We found that because of their dual role, senior managers construct two sets of interwoven and interacting change narratives which mediate the relationship between the wider organizat...

For organisational leaders, managing change is a primary management activity (By, 2005). Reflecting this significance, there is now a substantial body of literature and many dynamic models and ‘recipes’ advising leaders how to implement change successfully. While models and recipes abound, there is little research that examines the micro processes of change leadership. This paper directly addresses that lacuna. Through the application of a novel method, it examines how leaders communicate to give sense to discontinuous change. The study is set in a multi-leader context where leaders compete to give sense to the same discontinuous change. The study is grounded in sensegiving theory (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). This is an established and effective lens through which leadership behaviour can be investigated during organisational change. The study diverges from established approaches that use framing and interpretivist perspectives, adopting unusually a critical realist stance (Bhaskar, 1979) to explore underlying structures at play. Following the case study approach suggested by Eisenhardt (1989), argument theory (Toulmin, 1958) and Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals are used to examine, at a micro level, the behaviour of leaders as they attempt to give sense to the same discontinuous change. A theoretical model is presented which captures identified interconnected meaning giving and sense creation processes that underpins this sensegiving

The strategic change is an issue that closely related to strategic leadership. As this paper elaborates how strategic leadership determines the strategic change, the elaboration of both concept and their relationship are presented through propositions that are developed from the modified Hambrick’s model. Strategic leadership that causes strategic change in terms of strategic process and content within environmental and organizational context will lead to organizational performance as an ultimate outcome.

Organizations are facing rapid changes in technology, changing social trends, diversity in the workforce, political changes, globalization, and changes in stakeholders' needs and preferences. To sustain in a turbulent environment, businesses have to move and change themselves at the same pace at which their surroundings are changing. But the achievement of desired change is directly linked to people and 'Strategic Change' helps to manage this people's side of change effectively so that the business side of change is achieved. This paper explores how to manage people during an organizational change and focuses on promoting readiness to change and reducing resistance to change amongst their employees. As a conceptual business framework for an organization, change management increases the success of critical projects and improves a company's ability to adapt quickly.

Included in this paper is, a case study of the Iggy (2011) article, which relates to leadership theory in change management environments. Additionally, there is an understanding of leadership theory during change management, and the understanding of the strategic issues and challenges. Leaders can influence the effectiveness of the organization in many ways including leadership power. This paper gives clarity into change management, with an understanding of the change process, that occurred for Iggy’s. There is information of change management and the strategic issues in relationship to leadership theory. Ending with the understanding leadership effectiveness depends primarily on the nature of the organization, task, and its followers (Yukl, 2013).