Strategic leadership has become an indispensable factor for companies to promote their development, maintain competitive advantage, and seek new opportunities. This study examines the various features of strategic leadership research by retrieving and analyzing the existing publications. The main objective of this study is to review 416 relevant papers on strategic leadership in the Web of Science core database from 1996 to 2021. With the help of HistCite and VOSviewer visual science tools,

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... paper first presents the research methodology and data sources to describe an overview of strategic leadership research, including growth trends, journal distribution, core authors, research institutions, and key literature. Next, this paper also finds four research strands in existing research: leader traits, CEO-TMT interface, learning and innovation, and dynamic leadership. Then, we used the keyword analysis to extract five hot topics with research value: strategic leaders, corporate governance, ethical practices, organizational learning, and organizational change and innovation. This study provides a reference for selecting a research theme and constructing a framework for strategic leadership in a comprehensive, scientific and visual way. Furthermore, it also offers the scholars map for building collaborative research networks with multiple core authors and research institutions across the globe. Therefore, they could contribute significantly to further research.