Architectural Leadership: The Neglected Core of Organizational Leadership

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12108
• Date: 01 September 2017

Architectural Leadership: The Neglected Core

of Organizational Leadership

ELDAD KOLLENSCHER,

1

DOV EDEN,

1

BOAZ RONEN

1

and MOSHE FARJOUN

2

1

Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University,Tel Aviv, Israel

2

Schulich School of Business, York University, Ontario, Canada

The cornerstoneof architectural leadership(AL) theory is to structurethe organization in service to itsstrategy so

as to improveits capabilities and enhance itsvalue. Rather than relying onthe CEO’s personal influence, A L centers

on structuring and operating core organization-wide processes that diffuse leadership influence across managerial

levels and harness the whole organization better to attain its goals. AL is grounded in the academic management

literature.It complements theories that focus on targets but neglect the means needed to achieve them. Though most

managers spend much of their time dealing with the means while struggling with insufficient infrastructure, existing

management theories ignore theseissues or say little about them. Architectural leadership theory provides a solution

to this lacuna. Applying AL can help managers create value by developing the infrastructure required for strategy

implementation .

Keywords: leadership; structuring,operations; core processes; value creation; capabilities

Introduction

The organizational leadership literature includes 66

theories of leadership (Dinh et al., 2014). Yet, existing

leadership theories leave a void in our knowledge of

how managers can and should pull the levers that run

the organization. In light of the multitude of leadership

approaches,to see the forest for the trees –following Dinh

et al. (2014) and Day et al. (2014) –we focus on two

dominant approaches (and refer to many others) that

explain basic aspectsof management and leadership from

different point of view: strategic management that best

represents the macro perspective and transformational

leadership that best represents the micro perspective.

Anyone fluent in both of these approaches would still

not know how to manage an organization. Despite

plentiful acknowledgment of the importance of leadership

to the organization, analysis of the processes by which it

achieves results requires extension, as described below

in connection with the above two approaches. The

purpose of the present paper is to fill this void by

proposing ‘architectural leadership’(AL), a new theory.

AL is both an exposition of organizational reality and an

abstract theory. It describes what successful managers

actually do but which our leadership theories largely

ignore. We also give voice to a normative approach and

suggest how the constructs we present can be applied to

enhance organizational effectiveness. AL theory does

not supplanteither transformational leadership or strategic

management; rather, it supplements both of them by

adding the missing core in organizational leadership

theory.

The interpersonal leadership approach focuses on one-

on-one leadership and team leadership and posits leader

behavioras the key lever of influence.For the last 25 years,

transformational leadership has been considered the most

effective form of leadership (Conger and Kanungo, 1998;

Shamir et al., 1993; Van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013)

and is ranked most effective type of leadership in the full

range leadership model (Avolio, 2011). Transformational

leadershipcomprises four types of behavior thatare aimed

at transforming and elevating the followers to higher

levels of thought, motivation, commitment, and effort,

culminating in improved performance. The link between

transformational leadershipand effectiveness has received

strong empirical support (e.g., DeRue et al., 2011; Dvir

et al., 2002; Judge and Piccolo, 2004).

Despite its illumination of leaders’interpersonal

influence, transformational leadership theory has serious

limitations, beyond Van Knippenberg and Sitkin’s

(2013) incisive criticism (see below). Unlike at the team

Correspondence: Boaz Ronen, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv

University, Tel Aviv 69778 Israel, Tel: +972-3-6441181. E-mail

boazr@post.tau.ac.il

European Management Review, Vol. 14, 247–264, (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12108

©2017 European Academy of Management

level, at the organizational level time constraints and

physical and psychological distance between many

leaders and their followers diminish the managers’

capacity to be an ongoing source of interpersonal

influence (Yukl, 1999). This limitation is more severe

the larger the organization. More generally, as Yukl

(2006) emphasized, the micro perspective cannot

explain organizational effectiveness. Transformational

leadership theory neglects macro-level structure and

processes and leaves the organization without clear

strategy and infrastructure required to fulfill its goals.

Furthermore, the theory is based on top-down influence

and ignores the need for bottom-up influence, that is,

feedback and ideas that might evolve into emergent

strategy that complements the planned strategy

(Mintzberg et al., 1998). Without bi-directional commu-

nication and teamwork at the top management team,

there is a danger of a domineering CEO causing critical

mistakes that nobody can stop (Collins, 2001),

especially if the CEO is a charismatic autocrat (Conger,

1990).

The strategic management approach best instantiates

the macro perspective. It focuses on the CEO and the

top executive team and posits strategy as a lever of

influence. According to Hambrick (1989: 5), strategic

management ‘put top managers back in the strategy

picture’in the late 1980s. The strategic management

literature deals mainly with management; only a few

strategic management scholars refer to leadership (e.g.,

Hambrick, 1989, 2007). The basic idea behind strategic

management as a broad field is that senior executives

shape firms and achieve their goals by developing and

disseminating an organizational strategy. Research

confirms the positive influence of the design and

implementation of suitable strategy on organizational

performance (e.g., Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1997;

Miller and Cardinal, 1994).

However, althoughthe strategic management approach

successfully highlights the influence of leadership at the

macro level, it too has its shortcomings. These include

its emphasis on strategic analysis and planning (Porter,

1980), and especially economic factors, at the expense

of issues of implementation (Raes et al.,2011).

Furthermore, the focus on adaptation to the environment

and exploitation of opportunities inevitably leads to

neglect of internal issues, such as the development of

new capacities. These capacities may enable the design

and implementation of a new strategic component, rather

than merely extrapolating from extant directions

(Mintzberg et al., 1998).Finally, the organization focuses

on control and supervision and tends to overlook

employee motivation and commitment. The result is that

human resources, including middle management, as well

as organizational culture and behavior, are neglected.

Thus, the strategic management and transformational

leadership perspectives are insufficient for knowing how

to exploit the firm’s value enhancing potential.

The need for a new leadership theory

Imagine a CEO of an organizationwith three to four layers

of management,arriving at the officein the morning. Let’s

assume that the CEO has outstanding transformational

leadership skillsand has a document describing a brilliant

new strategy. Does the academic literature provide CEOs

with sufficient guidelines regarding their role and

responsibility? The answer is very limited and refers

mainly to managerial aspects of the CEOrole: controlling

daily operations and, if all goes well, supervising strategy

implementation. But the leadership aspects of the CEO

role have been neglected.As explained below, AL theory

enters the ‘black box’of leadership and suggests an

answer: the CEO’s role is to improve extant capabilities

and to develop new capabilities that will facilitate

realizing the organization’s strategy and opening

promising new strategic directions.

The architect leader operates in the middle ground –

the organizational meso space between the macro and

micro levels. Existing approaches by and large have

neglected this area despite its critical importance. While

strategic management –that operates in the macro level

–and transformat ional leadership –that operates in the

micro level –are goal oriented (aiming at organizational

strategy and individual and team goals, respectively) –

they neglect the development of the means needed to

achieve it, that is, the infrastructure of organizational

capabilities located in the middle ground. The architect

leader’s activity in the middle ground, then, focuses on

structuring the organization’s capabilities, in particular

its core processes, and adapting them to the competitive

and dynamic environment. The structuring process

explains how the architect leader enacts influence, such

that it trickles down through all levels of management

and is expressed in the organization and its environment

over time. The architect leader’s impact on employees

increases through the direction and support of their daily

operations. His or her impact on organizational perfor-

mance is manifested thanks to the core processes aimed

at value enhancement.

Other leadership approaches leave a lacuna because

they do not explicate any process that underlies the effect

of the leader. This undermines their validity, as described

below. AL theory fills in this lacuna. The architectural

explanation is based on the organizational system, which

is the deepest and fundamental level on which the other

two levels lean –the level of behavior patterns above it

and the extrinsic level of events. According to Senge

(1990a: 12), ‘Structural explanations are the most

powerful. Only they address the underlying causes of

248 E. Kollenscher et al.

©2017 European Academy of Management