ABSTRACT

The way a leader's transition happens depends as much on the organisational "context" as it does on the leader himself. The effectiveness of the transition is the result of the way multiple actors hold the tensions inherent in the phase of transition and seek to achieve an optimum balance between the poles of each tension, depending on the context. Each organisation is subject is manifold pressures, constraints and opportunities from the economic, social and political environment it works within. Contexts vary along many dimensions and are unique. Each organisation needs to respond appropriately to the context, if it is to be effective and to survive. Although it is difficult to estimate precisely the impact of the tensions on the leader's decisions, it nonetheless seems to be quite clear that each of these pressures on the leader tended to tip the scales, as it were, towards one or other of the poles of the tensions that we have identified.