Analyzing the expected role of strategic leadership and supportive culture in executing business strategies: The mediating role of employee engagement

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships between strategic leadership, supportive culture, and strategy execution. Employee engagement was assumed to mediate the relationship between the study variables. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 249 respondents. The researchers used many statistical techniques to test the study hypotheses and validate the proposed research framework. The findings of the study support the notion that the combination of supportive culture and strategic leadership is best to increase the likelihood of strategy execution success. The suggested conceptual framework reveals that organizations can execute strategies successfully by enhancing the capabilities of strategic leadership and creating a supportive culture. Employee engagement is also expected to play a pivotal role in supporting the leader's efforts and activating the role of the supportive culture. Further studies could be extended to cover other organizational factors such as digital culture in its relationship with strategy execution. Organizations should effectively communicate the strategy to the executors, increase the clarity of the strategic objectives, create an agile organization, and reward executors. Additional work will be necessary to generalize the findings to other management programs related to strategy execution. The study adds to the body of knowledge related to the strategy execution process. It fills a knowledge gap since most of the literature review focuses on strategy formulation rather than strategy execution. The study also provides corporate leaders with a framework to help them to overcome the hurdles of strategy execution.