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In this chapter, two academics from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan collaborate with the President of their university to present their experiences and ideas about positive strategic leadership. Positive strategic leadership is derived from the juxtaposition of ideas from the growing stream of research on positive organizational scholarship with what is already known from the literature on strategic leadership. The authors embed new views into current theoretical perspectives on strategic leadership to provide an integrative overview and use the president's experiences during the nationally followed Affirmative Action cases as a vehicle for illustrating five themes: (1) A lifetime of experiences shapes who you are, (2) issues commonly choose you before you choose them, (3) begin with a purpose in mind, (4) appreciate divergent views, and (5) be a beacon for the future. Additionally, the authors provide practitioners with some “takeaways” on positive strategic leadership.

The current strategic leadership literature tends to advocate a leader-centric (upper-echelon) approach to strategy, one in which the leader positions the organization competitively within an environment. Based on complexity theory, we argue that strategic leadership in a fast-paced environment works to organize both the environment and the organization in ways that enhance the firm's adaptability, innovativeness, and fitness. We propose a two-pronged strategy: Foster cooperative relationships with the organization's environment, and enable adaptive organizations that are “partners” in the strategic leadership function.

This part aims to push thinking on strategic leadership one step further. In all of the previous parts we follow quite a hierarchical model, in which leaders at the top outline the vision, the strategy, and the key implementation tools. Here, Russ Marion and Mary Uhl-Bien challenge the validity of this view of strategic leadership. They argue that strategic leadership is about interacting effectively within a complex interplay of environmental and organizational forces to enable fit environments and adaptive organizations. For them this means that strategic leaders need to pay significant attention to the interdependence between their organizations and both competitors and other relevant organizations in the niches in which they operate. It also means that they need to develop adaptive leadership capacity far down in the organization and show a willingness to follow those leaders at the lower levels. Marion and Uhl-Bien then argue both that strategic leaders have a more interdependent view of organizations and that they have a greater willingness to act as followers than we see in any of the leadership and/or strategy literature. As this approach to strategic leadership is quite new, we do not have application chapters here.

In this part we focus on the structures, systems, and processes that support and encourage the development of leaders in the organization. David Day introduces the theme, exploring the social architecture most conducive to the development of leadership throughout the organization and the role strategic leaders need to play to create such architecture. The next two chapters show how two large organizations have gone about changing their social architecture in order to develop both a broader and a more engaged leadership cadre. Ellen Van Velsor and Patricia O’Connor show how a large US service organization has started to change its social architecture by creatively combining empowerment, learning and performance orientations. Paul Broeckx and Robert Hooijberg show how Nestlé, the Swiss-based global fast-moving consumer goods company, has started to replace the most limiting aspects of the traditional hierarchy to more fully engage the full human capacity of its workforce.

Organizational structures, systems and processes can and do limit the discretionary decision-making space of all involved in organizational life. However, high up in organizations leaders have significant discretion in making decisions. Robert Kaiser and Robert Hogan explore the dark side of what might happen if strategic leaders use their discretionary freedom for personal rather than organizational benefit. Timo Santalainen and Ram Baliga present a real example of discretionary leadership gone bad in an NGO that looks quite healthy on the outside. They refer to the phenomenon of a financially successful company with a sick leader as the “healthy-sick organization.” We juxtapose this chapter with the one by Corey Billington and Michèle Barnett Berg to show how Duncan Covington at computer products, services, and solutions company IQ used his discretionary freedom for the good of the company. Covington inherited a sick organization and introduced key systems, structures, and processes to bring it back to health.

As CEOs now communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure that the intended meaning of their messages is received. Boas Shamir focuses on how leaders engage in the management of meanings in order to (1) justify their actions and the changes they introduce to the organization; (2) recruit followers and motivate members of the organization to support their actions; and (3) create shared perceptions and interpretations so that members’ actions are guided by a common definition of the situation. Heike Bruch, Boas Shamir, and Galit Eilam-Shamir show how the leader of a large Swiss-based company actively managed the views, interpretations and energy of more than 100,000 employees through weekly e-mail letters when the company faced grave financial difficulties. Gretchen Spreitzer, Mary Sue Coleman, and Daniel Gruber show how an incoming university president dealt with an ongoing lawsuit regarding the university's use of affirmative action in its admissions processes and worked with various stakeholders to firmly establish the university's identity.

Most of the literature on strategic management portrays the strategic leader as a planner, decision formulator, and implementer of structure and processes. Theories of strategic management have not paid much attention to the essence of all leadership roles, namely the role of influencing others, and have not been much informed by leadership theories in this regard. In this chapter, I argue that the existing gap between the field of leadership and the field of strategic management can be bridged by paying closer attention to the fundamentally social and interpretative nature of the strategy formation and implementation, and in particular to the role of strategic leaders as managers of meanings. The chapter presents the idea of leadership as the management of meanings, applies this idea to the role of strategic leaders, offers a set of meanings to focus on when we consider strategic leaders as managers of meanings, discusses the link between meaning making and organizational performance, and attends to some potential dangers involved in viewing leaders as managers of meanings.

While there is growing recognition of the role of leaders as managers of meanings, leadership theories have so far focused primarily on the articulation of a positive vision, the framing of organizational issues as opportunities, and emphasizing potential gains and benefits for the organization and its members. However, these positive frames may not be equally valid under all circumstances and with respect to all issues. This chapter concentrates on exploring leadership as management of meanings in times of crisis and recovery, when leaders attempt to stop deterioration, turn the organization around, and lead it to recovery. We label this leadership approach prevention-oriented leadership. On the basis of an analysis of a series of weekly e-mail letters sent by the CEO of a large company to all organizational members over a period of 22 months we suggest that prevention-oriented leaders may use three related ways to manage meanings, namely (1) generating a clear picture of the negative challenge, (2) strengthening the organizational members’ self-efficacy and confidence in the organization's resources available for coping with the crisis, and (3) creating a sense of progress.

It is proposed that the desirable goal of structuring the organization for leadership development has less to do with formal hierarchical structure than with the informal norms and networks that support organizational systems and processes. In this manner, strategic leaders need to think of themselves as social architects in helping to generate the kinds of normative conditions that facilitate leadership development. In particular, priority concerns for leadership development are issues such as what are the culture and climate for learning and development? and how healthy is the interpersonal context in which the shared work of the organization takes place?