Leadership and Strategic Change under Ambiguity
通过一家大型公立医院的案例，研究目标不清、权力流动模糊的组织中领导力如何推动战略变革，发现协作领导力虽关键但易因内部冲突瓦解，变革呈周期性非线性模式。
This paper draws on a case study of a large public hospital to examine the processes of leadership and strategic change in organizations where goals are unclear and authority is fluid and ambiguous. The case history describes the evolution of leadership roles during a period of radical change in which a general hospital acquires a university affiliation while moving towards a more integrated form of management. The study traces the tactics used by members of the leadership group to stimulate change, and the corresponding impact of these tactics on both the progress of change and on leadership roles themselves. It is suggested that strategic change in these organizations requires collaborat ive leadership involving constellations of actors playing distinct but tightly-knit roles. Yet, collaborative leadership is fragile and can easily disintegrate due to intemal conflict or to discreditation associated with more unpopular (although potentially effective) change tactics. Thus, under ambiguity, radical trans formations may tend to occur in a cyclical non-linear pattern with periods of substantive change alternating with periods of political realignment. The paper concludes with a series of five propositions concerning the collaborative, cyc lical, interpretative, and entropic nature of leadership and strategic change pro cesses under ambiguity.