Dissertation
Transacting impact: the interplay of knowledge, trust, change, and boundary work in fractional leadership
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Drexel University
May 2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011370
Abstract
Organizations increasingly turn to fractional leaders--senior executives who embed within organizations on a part‑time, time‑bound basis to assume formal leadership roles and provide strategic direction--to address complex challenges under constrained conditions. Despite their growing prevalence, little is known about how impact is generated under these conditions. Drawing on the lived experiences of fractional leaders and the business leaders who hire them, this research examines how fractional leaders create impact within client organizations. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the analysis develops a process‑oriented understanding of how impact is generated through the ongoing negotiation of trust and knowledge. Findings suggest that impact is not delivered but continually transacted, as trust and knowledge are repeatedly renegotiated in practice. Efforts to drive change simultaneously generate resistance, as resistance arises from the very process of attempting to alter existing arrangements. At the same time, engagement scope serves as a dynamic structural record of negotiated expectations and boundaries that evolves. Across these dynamics, impact emerges not through linear execution, but through the active management of competing tensions that shape how expertise is applied and received. Collectively, these dynamics are theorized as Transacting Impact: A Grounded Theory Model of the Interplay of Knowledge, Trust, Change, and Boundary Work in Fractional Leadership. This model explains how fractional leaders generate impact under conditions of constrained time, authority, and scope and positions fractional leadership as a distinct and evolving form of executive work, providing a foundation for future research and practice on this emerging model.
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Details
- Title
- Transacting impact
- Creators
- Toni Isabel Haugh
- Contributors
- Rajiv Nag (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University
- Number of pages
- xii, 177 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Bennett S. LeBow College of Business; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991022182072804721