Identifying Strategic Leadership Competencies with a view to Satisfying Organizational Stakeholder in Iran Air Transport Industry

The overall responsibility of any organization lies with its strategic leaders or senior management team and organizational performance is influenced by their strategic choices, in other words, the organization is the reflection of its top executives. The current dynamics of the business environment and technological advances have put organizations at odds with various stakeholder groups that sometimes have conflicting demands. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the capabilities required for strategic leaders to satisfy different organizational stakeholders in Iranian airlines.

The approach of this research is inductive and in terms of research orientation it is an applied researches. The study was conducted by using a qualitative method through the thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 strategic leaders of airlines (CEO, Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officers). Purposeful judgment and snowball methods were used for sampling. QSR Nvivo software was used to analyze the data derived from the interviews and the reliability of the coding of the interviews was assessed by using in-subject percentage agreement method.

as a result of analyzing the data from the interviews, 4 main themes are: strategic leadership skills, individual attributes, interpersonal behavioral skills, management skills, and 24 Sub-themes and 61 concepts for strategic keadership with stakeholders approach was identified.

in the present study, in order to satisfy different stakeholders by top management team, the fourfold pattern of strategic leadership was presented.