Becoming a leader in a complex organization

For a new leader, the process of entering and establishing a position of le adership in a complex organization presents a major challenge. This challen ge seems particularly acute when authority, goals and technology are ambigu ous, as in many professional service organizations. In this paper, we integ rate ideas from the literature on socialization and role theory as well as that on executive succession processes to view new leader integration as a mutual adjustment process between two trajectories - that of the organizati on and that of the new leader. It is argued that this may lead to four poss ible types of integration outcomes: assimilation, transformation, accommoda tion and parallelism. Drawing on a case study of a large hospital, the pape r identifies several mechanisms that can be mobilized by the new leader to enhance his or her room for manoeuvre as the integration process evolves. T he mechanisms can be classified as collaborative or affirmative, with each type having different risks and advantages. The case analysis further revea ls that leader integration processes may be differentiated between differen t activity domains, dynamic over time las the use of one type of integratio n approach alters the potential for another later), and interactive across different activity domains las events in one part of the organization have consequences for those occurring in another).