Abstract
This article offers a process model of top executives’ strategic interactions for organizational transformation. Building on punctuated equilibrium theory and on sociologist Erving Goffman’ concept of game, it theorizes a top management game played by individuals and coalitions from within the top management group. By fostering strategic creativity, the game solves the strategic dilemma between exploiting the ongoing organizational path with the risk of letting the organization die and exploring new paths toward organizational transformation. This article contributes to the strategic leadership literature by showing that strategic interactions are at the foundations of the upper echelon and by modelling the process of behavioral integration as a top management game. It also offers implications for ambidexterity and punctuated equilibrium research, and for practice.