Statecraft, Strategy, and Corporate Leadership

Abstract

Statecraft—the use of persuasion and informal authority to mobilize coalitions to accomplish goals—is a little-recognized but critical element of strategic leadership. In exercising statecraft, top managers continually move back and forth across the boundary between the firm and a wide variety of constituencies, paying close attention to the political as well as the economic consequences of their decisions. The two central jobs of the corporate statesman are managing the core coalition assembled to achieve corporate purpose and maintaining the balance between the technocratic and political systems of the firm.