Exploring Adaptive Leader Behavior: A Qualitative Study of Military Officers in the Belgian Defense

Fully developed paper accepted following double-blind peer review and presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting:

Leadership scholars have advanced adaptability as a core behavioral phenomenon in the context of effective leadership. To lead effectively, leaders are required to respond flexibly to changing circumstances by taking appropriate actions. However, adaptive leadership is surprisingly an undertheorized phenomenon and thus remains poorly understood. Here, our overall aim is to build theory that advances our understanding of why and how leaders engage in adaptive behavior. A qualitative inductive study was conducted to explore adaptive leadership by examining what changes in leadership situations, the impact of these changes on dynamic leader behavior, and the basic mechanisms governing these adaptive dynamics. The study participants consisted of 20 military leaders in the Belgian Defense forces and the qualitative data was collected using in-depth interviews. An interpretative approach to inquiry was adopted, by drawing on key ideas from main psychological and leadership theories. The study findings show that adaptive leadership is a dynamic and complex process that occurs at different levels of analysis. Different forms of adaptive change were identified, and the underlying adjustment mechanisms were integrated into an integrative framework that broadly explains why and how leaders adaptively change what they do. The main implications for both theory and practice are discussed.