Mitigating anxiety: The role of strategic leadership groups during radical organisational change
研究战略领导群体在激进组织变革中如何通过情感管理和权力关系调整来缓解焦虑，基于对一家全球欧洲公司的纵向研究，提出了“协商秩序”四阶段模型。
This article examines the role of strategic leadership groups in radical organisational change. Previous research has focused on how ‘heroic’ individual leaders guide change. In contrast, we argue that strategic leadership groups are indispensable to understanding and supporting radical organisational change. Building on a longitudinal study in a global European company, our research identifies four phases of ‘negotiated order’ that shape group and organisational responses to change. Our findings reveal that strategic leadership groups help manage emotions and understand the shifting authority relations that inevitably arise during periods of change. Drawing upon the psychoanalytic concept of ‘projective identification’, we develop a theoretical framework for understanding the tensions of change. The model shows how emotional coalitions that develop in strategic leadership groups afford a source of political and psychological containment against the anxieties of radical organisational change. These formations offer transitional spaces for change, providing opportunities for progress. The advantage of this new perspective on radical change is that it helps to move the organisation beyond periods of ambivalence and conflict, with positive implications for leadership practice.