Developing network leadership in planned organisational change: the emergence of transformation network leadership

Abstract

According to the literature, Network Leadership is defined as a leadership approach that influence the interaction mechanisms between actors and nodes connecting scattered organisational clusters to achieve the collective organisational goal. Network Leadership is based on network leaders’ attributes and practices to connect scatter clusters across organisational boundaries. Literature suggests that Network Leadership is to be further explored and examined to capture its conceptual dimension. Taking Network Leadership as useful but underdeveloped concept, this study brought together existing knowledge from distributed leadership and organisational transformation and examined the intersection of these two domains through the theoretical lens of social network theory. This research develops the Network Leadership literature by introducing the phenomenon of Transformation Network Leadership, which shifts leadership theory and practice away from reliance on single change agents towards the creation of a network of transformation leaders to implement planned organisational changes. This study details the conceptual characteristics of Transformation Network Leadership and demarcates it by specifying its essential features: Network Leaders Attributes and Network Leaders Practices. The theoretical contribution of this study is demonstrated by analysing critically Transformation Network Leadership, drawing upon Whetten (1989), to identify its components, to postulate relationships between the components and to suggest conditions under which Transformation Network Leadership is more or less likely to support the implementation of planned change initiatives. This study’s ontological and epistemological position is interpretivist / constructivist. The findings are based on an in-depth, qualitative study conducted within Bahrain’s Oil and Gas sector. The unit of analysis is the companies operating in Bahrain Oil and Gas. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews and data analysis conducted using thematic analysis technique. The limitations of the study are conducting the study in Bahrain Oil and Gas, qualitative methodological approach, and the limited sample size. Future research directions are examining the intersection between distributed leadership with organisational transformation, examining Transformation Network Leadership on a broader scale and expanding the research to regional and international context. Future research can be extended beyond the scope of this research to other sectors as well as carrying out quantitative research to examine Transformation Network Leadership.