Towards Conceptualising Strategic Leadership Phenomenon: A Systematic Review and Call for Future Research

The paper responds to concerns in the literature characterised by declining interest in the focus on strategic leadership in the last couple of years, alongside other indications pointing to a construct still in an exploratory state despite its growing scholarly and practical significance. The study was undertaken as a conceptual paper that adopted a systematic literature review methodology to address three concerns that touched on establishing the current conceptualisation of strategic leadership in literature, the phenomenon emerging from its operation and the implications it raises for future scholarship. The authors sampled 218 peer-reviewed articles published in refereed journals between the years 2000-2024. The findings of the paper report on the scholarly milestones achieved in the seven phases of the historical development of strategic leadership, areas of convergence and divergence found across the diversity of definitions from various authors, the lenses through which proponents have described its nature, the variety of dimensions, as well as theories that underpin its conceptualisation and phenomenon. Various constructs associated with the emerging phenomenon have been reported, and the set of conceptual, empirical and contextual gaps in knowledge has been pointed out. The paper proposes a multidisciplinary-based theoretical framework for advancing knowledge in strategic leadership in diverse contexts. The study calls on future research to consider adopting the proposed model in guiding empirical investigations into the behaviour of strategic leadership in contexts least studied and the adoption of more rigorous methodological and statistical techniques.