Time as Context: Kairos, and the Spatio-temporal “Quality” of Strategic Leadership

This paper explores the qualitative, subjective and contingent values of the Ancient Greek concept of Kairos, and argues its utility in developing an adaptive, pragmatic, persuasive and creative model of Strategic Leadership. A kairotic model of Leadership, we argue, is more coherent with current and future approaches to Strategy and to its spatiotemporal qualities. In the following we first present the concept of Kairos and discuss its relevance to Strategic Leadership and its challenges, we then introduce current conceptualizations of Strategy and their implications for Strategic Leadership, and finally synthesize these insights and the literature to gauge implications.