Leading in the Paradoxical World of Crises: How Leaders Navigate Through Crises

Abstract

Living and operating in a global world, the risk for a global economic crisis has never been greater. As ongoing events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent war in Ukraine or the sharply increasing inflation have shown, organizations need to be highly resilient to persevere in a crisis-prone world. Even though we know that crises serve as a focal lens on leadership behavior and leaders play a crucial role in these scenarios, little is known as to how leaders handle an existence-threatening organizational crisis. Using an inductive analysis of 32 interviews on crisis leadership, we show that in the case of an acute crisis, leaders apply different paradoxical behaviors to cope effectively with the situation and navigate their organizations through these events. More specifically, our study contributes to existing literature by, first, showing that the distinctiveness of crises results from the fact that leaders are confronted with paradoxes that they can otherwise smoothly separate in terms of time or organization, second, revealing that the leader’s paradoxical behaviors as a respond are derived from their mindset to consciously recognize the contradictory demands of the crisis, and third, from their action in terms of a compressed situational leadership. By identifying six pairs of paradoxical behaviors, we demonstrate how leaders effectively deal with the unsolvable contradictions that arise from the crisis, and thus contribute to the organizations’ ability to cope with crises.

Leadership and collective learning: a case study of a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden

“…While research indicates that leadership plays a pivotal role in developing structures and processes that enable organisations to adapt to the pandemic (Kaul et al, 2022; Mai et al, 2022), actualising this can be challenging due to the disruption of conventional organisational communication channels, which in turn affects trust between leaders and team members (Zainab et al, 2022). This breakdown in communication and interaction, coupled with the diminished trust between leaders and employees during the pandemic, may in part be attributable to a propensity among many leaders to prioritise short-term solutions over longer-term ones, thereby limiting the team members’ capacity to cope with the crisis (Förster et al, 2022).…”

“Limping gallop”: leader resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…, 2022; Förster and Duchek, 2022) and an examination of healthcare leaders' resilience (Förster et al. , 2022a, b).…”

“…, 2014) and public sector leaders (Gray and Jones, 2018). The first empirical studies on leader resilience during the pandemic indicate that it emerged as flexible, improvised and innovative behaviour (Förster et al. , 2022b; Giousmpasoglou et al.…”

Resilience: A Critical Appraisal of the State of Research for Business and Society

“…Förster et al. ( 2022 ) also embrace the innate paradoxes in resilience. These authors have a specific focus on the cognitive and behavioral attributes of leaders that can facilitate resilience.…”

“…They find that a focus on formal boundary systems and an informal social context are positively related to contextual ambidexterity, which is, in turn, positively associated with firm performance. Förster et al (2022) also embrace the innate paradoxes in resilience. These authors have a specific focus on the cognitive and behavioral attributes of leaders that can facilitate resilience.…”