Leadership power struggles and organizational performance outcomes

Leadership power struggles are commonplace in the corporate world, but there has been relatively little study about how these power struggles affect organizational success. Derkzen et al. (2007) inquire as to whether or not internal power struggles signify a successful partnership, where the individuals engaged in the struggle may be providing the sort of governance needed through the process of challenging each other's ideas. Power is usually discussed at a macro-level, the power of different elements of society, for example. This creates a fairly significant gap in our understanding of how leadership power struggles influence the performance of organization. Indeed, such power struggles are natural when leadership is diffuse, and particularly when diffused among individuals with differing worldviews (Smith, et al., 2006). This is likely because the strongest ideas will rise to the top, and be the ones implemented.

There has been significant amounts of research on organizational power dynamics, so that is a well-studied issue that can form the basis for understanding how such dynamics -- conflict in particular -- affect organizational outcomes (Fairholm, 2009). Some research has had a fairly narrow focus, such as how struggles manifest in terms of executive power, and what that does to both governance and firm performance (Combs, et al., 2007), or how different leadership styles might affect performance (Gadot, 2006), but ultimately this is a thinly-studied issue. With that starting point, it is possible to begin explaining how organization dynamics, power and conflict might affect outcomes. Hypotheses can be developed, and subsequently tested.

Research Design

The research will utilize multiple different case studies. There are a few issues that will need to be resolved in order to make this possible. First, the concept of a leadership power struggle needs to be understood and defined. There is risk that arriving at a definition of what precisely constitutes a leadership power struggle will lead the researcher to specific conclusions -- in other words if something is not destructive, is it considered a leadership power struggle? If it has to be destructive to be considered a 'struggle', surely we do not need to conduct any research because we know the outcome is negative. So the definition has to be constructed in a way consistent with the literature and in a way that still leaves room for both positive and negative outcomes.

Once several case studies have been identified, there will need to be some analysis of the similarities and differences between the cases, as these are expected to have some explanatory power. So the research will be conducted on the basis of existing case studies on organizational conflict, to examine this issue. Financial data can be used to analyze organizational performance, but there may be challenges in operationalizing other variables.

Approach

Thus, is the issues regarding operationalizing variables cannot be overcome, the study will need to be primarily qualitative in nature. However, it may prove possible to develop a classification system for different types of leadership power struggles, in which case it may be reasonable to analyze if there is any connection between those and organizational financial outcomes. The issue of employee behavior is much more difficult to operationalize, so if that is the primary direction that the research take, it will necessarily be the case that the research remains qualitative in nature.

Rationale

The use of qualitative design is suited well to a topic on which there is very little quantitative data. The reality of firm performance is that while it is measured on financial statements, the inputs are qualitative, and in the real world no one or two variables will have anything close to explanatory power. A firm could have a toxic leadership struggle, but thrive in a rapidly-growing market. Furthermore, accounting data is sometimes dependent on accounting techniques -- firms can differ in certain areas so it is not necessarily possible to directly compare firms in different industries against each other. Qualitative study is much better suited for the nuance and flexibility that this research question seeks to understand.

Population

The population here will be the case studies. It is estimated that at least 10 such case studies will be needed to understand the issues embedded in the research question. If it is possible to gather more case studies, that will be ideal, but a minimum of ten will be required to draw reasonable conclusions from. The entire population consists of all American corporate organizations, so the case studies will ultimately represent a very small component of this total population. What percentage of the population will depend on how "leadership power struggle" is defined.

Ethical Considerations