The state of the art of strategic leadership

Abstract

Strategic leadership is a rich yet fragmented area of research. To address this gap, this article aims to consolidate and provide a state-of-the-art overview of strategic leadership research. To achieve its aim, this article conducts a bibliometric-temporal analysis of strategic leadership using bibliometric data of relevant literature available through Scopus, the largest scientific database for review endeavors. Using 6024 documents of strategic leadership research identified and retrieved from Scopus, this article reveals the performance (e.g., year, article, journal, author, country) and science (e.g., topics, themes) of strategic leadership research across four decades. Noteworthily, strategic leadership is inherently grounded in digital transformation, innovation, and the upper echelons, with a growing footprint that spans across basic management and organizational activities; competitive advantage capabilities and strategies; the multiple roles of managers; the leadership, innovative, and strategic functions of management and upper echelons, including those specific to top management teams; the strategic leader; strategic choices; strategic teams; as well as strategic succession. More importantly, the review herein this article, to the best knowledge of the authors, represents the largest consolidation effort and review of strategic leadership research using scientific methods adopted from information science in the form of a bibliometric-temporal analysis, and thus, providing a state of the art of strategic leadership.