Leadership and Strategic Management: Decision Making in Times of Change

The book aims at tackling the potential interrelations among environmental transformations, strategic decisions, and leadership, to better understand the role of external and internal factors on the effectiveness of managers. Managers are facing unprecedented complexity, volatility, and ambiguity, quickly adapting their decision-making, leadership, vision, and strategies. Megatrends and forces of change have profound implications for business models, processes, and organizational structures, calling into question current paradigms and designing future change. Additionally, unprecedented disruptions, unforecastable in their nature, have increased the need for resilience and strategic flexibility. The book aims at tackling the potential interrelations among environmental transformations, strategic decisions, and leadership to better understand the role of external and internal factors on the effectiveness of managers. The book defines “change”: its extent, nature, and characteristics. Then, it focuses on decision-making, the role of potential cognitive biases, and how the interaction with the perception of determined environmental events affects the way in which decision-makers decide to implement specific strategies. Finally, in the light of waves of strategic change, it reviews theories on leadership and transformation by looking at the role and traits of leaders. Since environmental transformations have the potential to “disrupt” not only strategies but also decision-making processes and leadership, the book provides a review on the issue and propose an integrative framework which can be useful for both scholars and managers, especially in the fields of decision-making and strategy.