Strategic and Operational Leadership

Jerry Hunt, former editor of the scientific journal Leadership Quarterly, has estimated that 90 percent of leadership research has been concerned with some form of the forceful/enabling dynamic. On the other hand, there has been relatively little scholarly study of the relationship between strategic leadership and operational leadership. To the extent that they have been explored, the two types are usually portrayed as completely different brands of leadership belonging to distinctly different types of leader.

One of many studies to draw this conclusion was conducted at Dow Chemical in 2003 by two Central Michigan University researchers. They compared two key roles in creating a new business—the “ideator,” ...

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