The Role of Leadership in Complex Strategic Networks: Enabling Effect Versus Emergence

Abstract

In today's knowledge-based economy, the sources of competitive advantage lie more and more in webs of interactions among a variety of actors (such as firms, universities, research organizations, government institutions and so on), that over time originate the emergence of strategic networks. The paper aims to shed light on the determinants of network interaction and the ensuing processes of knowledge and resource transfer and circulation, on which the networkbased sources of competitive advantage are rooted. Accordingly, by means of the adoption of the complexity system perspective, on the one hand, we underscore the emergent nature of network interactions stemming from the self-organizing behaviours that spontaneously arise inside the strategic network. On the other hand, we unveil the creative dance involving the self-organizing and spontaneous network behaviours and the enabling effects sparking off the leadership action of network central poles. This creative dance expands the network interaction potential and permits both the networked actors and the strategic network as a whole to reach level of performance that might not have been accomplished otherwise.