Scholarship on strategic leadership has undergone considerable advancement in the 40 years since the introduction of upper echelon theory (UET). In this special issue we engage with the state-of-the-art in the field and categorize the manuscripts along a new typology of what constitutes the dominant coalition in the firm. From traditional models focusing on ‘CEO-only’ or ‘TMT as a group’ we discuss the current range of conceptualizations that exist of the dominant coalition and discuss benefits and drawbacks of each approach. In particular we observe a tendency of scholars to be more inclusive of specific actors, e.g. functional specialists of the TMT, and a natural broadening of the actors thought to be part of, or strongly supporting, the dominant coalition of the firm. This special issue offers guidelines on how to frame scholarship in the strategic leadership tradition going forward and presents an effort to strengthen coherence and clarity in the field.

自上层梯队理论 (UET) 引入以来的 40 年中，战略领导学研究取得了长足的进步。在本期特刊中，我们与该领域的最先进技术进行交流，并根据构成公司主导联盟的新类型对手稿进行分类。从专注于“仅限 CEO”或“TMT 作为一个群体”的传统模型中，我们讨论了主导联盟当前存在的概念化范围，并讨论了每种方法的优缺点。特别是，我们观察到学者倾向于更包容特定的参与者，例如 TMT 的职能专家，以及被认为是公司主导联盟的一部分或强烈支持的参与者的自然扩大。