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Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the authors’ understanding of how middle managers influence strategy implementation (SI) effectiveness by investigating the impact of leadership and work team coordination.

A field study was conducted using interviews and survey data gathered from executive managers, middle managers and work team members within a large municipal organization undergoing a major strategic change.

Middle manager transformational and instrumental leadership have a direct positive impact on work team SI effectiveness. Additionally, middle manager transformational leadership has an indirect positive effect on work team SI effectiveness through coordination.

The study offers insights into managers and practitioners seeking to improve SI effectiveness by highlighting the importance of middle manager leadership development and the coordination of interdependent tasks within work teams.

The study provides valuable insight into an important but previously unstudied relationship between middle manager leadership and SI effectiveness. The work also helps bridge the chasm between leadership research and strategy research by linking leadership behavior to SI effectiveness – a key ingredient of firm performance.

Questionnaires assessing subjects′ perceptions of charismatic and non‐charismatic leaders were administered to civilians and military officers. Results provided support for House′s 1976 model in that many traits distinguished charismatic from non‐charismatic individuals. Additionally, charismatic military leaders differed from charismatic civilian leaders on a number of personal characteristics. Implications for selecting and training leaders in organisations are discussed.

Despite transformational leadership enjoying success and attention as an exceptional leadership theory, few scholars have investigated a specific link between transformational leadership theory and team performance. As such, we discuss how transformational leadership theory can provide a framework in which to investigate a leader's impact on team performance. We posit that idealized influence/inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration could produce intermediate outcomes such as shared vision, team commitment, an empowered team environment and functional team conflict. In turn, these intermediate outcomes may positively affect team communication, cohesion and conflict management. Implications for team development, team training and team structure are presented. Limitations and future directions are also discussed.

This study aims to explore challenges arising from the development of teamwork in a new organizational structure, based on the experiences of the staff involved.

An explorative and qualitative approach was used, with individual interviews as the data collection method. These interviews were analyzed using qualitative and interpretative analysis with a modified editing style.

The results describe how the lack of essential organizational prerequisites for teamwork and the absence of the leadership qualities needed to facilitate teamwork contribute to difficulties in working in a team-orientated way. Shortage of information among the team members and few scheduled meetings signify insufficient coordination within the working team. Without a team leader who can keep things together, read the team members’ needs and support and guide them, team work is difficult to uphold because the members will need to seek support elsewhere. Assumed synergies from working together as team member experts will be thwarted.

This study contributes knowledge about the difficulties in creating team-orientated cooperation in a new organizational structure when leadership as well as structures and processes supporting team work are absent. The challenges described are drawn from the experiences of the staff concerned, providing insights to form a basis for theoretical and practical discussion.