How Can Strategic Leadership Support the 5 Functions of Strategic Management within University Environment?

Abstract

Bearing in mind the highly important role that leadership has in modern business environment, and launching from the interconnected relationship between leadership and management; this research aimed at highlighting how strategic leadership can support strategic management function and in a university environment. Researcher adopted the five functions of strategic management which included (planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling). Through the adoption of quantitative approach and building a questionnaire to be the study tool; (137) individuals responded to an online uploaded questionnaire and SPSS was used in order to screen and analyzed collected primary data. Utilizing mean, standard deviation and linear regression, results indicated that characteristics of strategic leadership were able to support all functions of strategic management based on the common goals that both leadership and management had from a strategic perspective. Results of study accepted main hypothesis and agreed on the fact that strategic leadership supports functions of strategic management with an R value of .860 and a correlation coefficient of 74%. Concerning functions of strategic management which were mostly supported by strategic leadership; results indicated that staffing was the most positively influenced function of strategic management scoring an R value of .936 with a correlation coefficient of 87.6%. Study recommended that risk management in all its forms and strategies is the most important fact in this scheme, given that strategic management is mostly based on managing in an unpredictable environment that is unstable and risky. Practical contribution of current study can be summed in the fact that it could be a source for leaders to deeply understand what strategic leadership is and how it can help strategic management be applied correctly in an educational environment.