The technology dimension of strategic leadership: The leadership challenge for production economists

Achieving sustainable competitive advantage and increasing the economic value of a firm in the 21st century's global economy will be a complex, challenging, and knowledge-based task. It can be thought of as revolving around the interplay of three basic forces: (a) a dynamic environment, filled with opportunities and threats, (b) an innovative and agile organizational system, and (c) strategic leadership whose role is to mediate between these two forces, to optimize existing processes and systems and, at the same time, to discover new opportunities and to capitalize on them. The purpose of this paper is to evidence the technology dimension of strategic leadership and to analyze new perspectives for production economics. We describe first the rules of the game in a dynamic and hypercompetitive environment. By examining the differences between leadership and management, it is possible, first to identify and understand the different roles of production economists and second to analyze the two most critical tasks of production economists: (a) as a manager, to optimize existing processes and systems, and (b) as a leader, to invent the future and to inspire people to work enthusiastically for achieving challenging goals. The message of the paper is that a comprehensive conceptual framework for integrating technology into strategic leadership increases the probability that a firm can achieve superior long-term performance.