Crisis Management: Informing a New Leadership Research Agenda

Abstract

As the business community becomes more complex, crisis events are likely to increase in both prevalence and severity. Whether management scholarship has kept pace with this new reality is debatable. Moreover, much of the existing crisis research—perhaps understandably—stems from a negative frame: crises are threats or problems to be overcome. Such research has produced relevant insight into crisis handling, has helped categorize the plethora of crisis events, and has connected crisis events to relevant management strategies. We argue here that this framing fundamentally limits the types of questions asked and the methodological approaches used to answer those questions. Perhaps worse, given the important role that leadership plays in crisis handling, this negative frame can hinder the possibilities for the practice and study of leadership. In this article, we review an array of crisis research and explore two theoretical domains—issue framing and deviance—and their potential role for influencing leadership theory. We discuss the challenges of conducting crisis research, and offer suggestions for new methodological approaches and new research questions that are consistent with a more positive leadership approach.

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the research committees at the University of Virginia's Darden Business School and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

Notes

In fact, on March 11, 2011 Sendai, Japan was devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami debilitated the cooling system at a nuclear plant in the Fukushima region, and the plant has been steadily leaking low levels of radiation. Although no deaths have been reported due to the radiation leak, the death toll from the tsunami has risen above 14,000.

Bennett and Robinson's (2000) operational definition of organizational deviance refers to the target of the deviant act—in this case, the organization. This definition should not be confused with alternative organizational deviance constructs that refer to inappropriate acts by the organization (e.g., Ermann & Lundman, 1978; Gouldner, 1968).

The majority of the research on crisis response strategies appears in communication or niche crisis management journals such as the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.