International Journal of Organizational Leadership

Strategic leadership has become an indispensable factor for companies to promote their development, maintain competitive advantage, and seek new opportunities. This study examines the various features of strategic leadership research by retrieving and analyzing the existing publications. The main objective of this study is to review 416 relevant papers on strategic leadership in the Web of Science core database from 1996 to 2021. With the help of HistCite and VOSviewer visual science tools, this paper first presents the research methodology and data sources to describe an overview of strategic leadership research, including growth trends, journal distribution, core authors, research institutions, and key literature. Next, this paper also finds four research strands in existing research: leader traits, CEO-TMT interface, learning and innovation, and dynamic leadership. Then, we used the keyword analysis to extract five hot topics with research value: strategic leaders, corporate governance, ethical practices, organizational learning, and organizational change and innovation. This study provides a reference for selecting a research theme and constructing a framework for strategic leadership in a comprehensive, scientific and visual way. Furthermore, it also offers the scholars map for building collaborative research networks with multiple core authors and research institutions across the globe. Therefore, they could contribute significantly to further research.

The methods for the management and leadership of educational and research organizations has always been a question of some researchers. With the emergence of the strategic management in educational organizations, different views were raised about the management of these institutions whether it is possible to apply issues related to the business and educational administration field. They both agree on the difference between educational environment and business environment. This difference leads to different research areas which one of them is the managers’ educational leadership style. Regarding to the educational research centers’ management, strategic leadership is one of leadership styles. This paper examined the effect of this leadership style on empowerment and job satisfaction of employees of Guilan University. The statistical population of the study consisted of 235 employees of Guilan University. Smart PLS software and Structural Equation Modeling were used for data analysis. The results showed that the style of strategic leadership and employee empowerment had a significant positive effect on job satisfaction.