ABSTRACT
What leadership activities of top executives have an impact on organizational performance? To answer this question, we will rely heavily on the concepts developed in the preceding three chapters and on the typology developed by Day and Lord (1988). More specifically, we will be concerned with both the direct and the indirect effects that executives have on organizational performance, topics that were discussed in chapter 9. Tushman and Romanelli’s (1985) theory of organizational evolution, which we explained in chapters 10 and 11, will also be used to help understand how leaders affect organizational performance. We cast that model into cusp catastrophe mathematical terms to represent the differential impact of convergent and reorientation evolutionary periods on performance. As suggested by Day and Lord, the alternative means by which executives affect performance can be equated with different paths of movement on the cusp surface and, in exceptional instances, with changes in the nature of the cusp surface itself.
