Leaders’ Impact on Organizational Change: Bridging Theoretical and Methodological Chasms
通过综述领导力与组织变革文献，识别跨学科、方法论和分析层面的鸿沟，提出概念框架来弥合这些鸿沟，并指出领导者影响变革的关键过程与未来研究方向。
The notions of leadership and organizational change have been closely linked and frequently discussed in tandem. Whereas we know much about leadership and change, we know relatively little about the integration of the two. Leadership is often discussed with respect to its impact on organizations in times of change, and the literature on organizational change frequently notes the roles that managers and change agents have, as change leaders. Yet, surprisingly, the impact of leaders on change has not been studied systematically. Through a comprehensive review of the literature on leadership and change we identified significant chasms across disciplines (e.g., strategy/organizational behavior), methodological approaches, and levels of analysis. We offer a conceptual framework to bridge these chasms and highlight the main processes through which leaders shape organizational change and influence its recipients. We identify key leadership functions and corresponding change processes through which leaders effectively implement changes. We also point to several directions for future investigation. In particular, we know very little about the role of leaders’ strategic choices in shaping employees’ responses to change and about the roles of context and time in moderating the effects of leaders’ actions during change.