Leadership Styles and Strategic Thinking in Organizational Level

Today, organizations are faced with some problems due to sever changes in technology and environment and these problems are complicated more and more. Solving these problems need a proper leadership style and an ability to interpret unrelated and unscheduled. This ability indeed is strategic thinking in organization. This research aims to investigate the relationship between leadership styles and strategic thinking in organizational level among industrial food and pharmaceutical companies of Ilam’s province. This research’s approach is co relational- descriptive and it was performed by distributing 219 questionnaires among managers and employees of these above mentioned industrial companies. For data collection, Multifactor Leadership standard questionnaire (MLQ), Leader- Member Exchange Leadership questionnaire of Liden and Maslyn (1998) and Researcher-made questionnaire of strategic thinking multiple regression test with step by step method were used. Findings show that there are a positive and significant correlation between leadership styles and strategic thinking in organizational level. Also, according to regression analysis, transformational leadership has the most positive influence on strategic thinking.