A Framework for Developing Organizational Crisis Leadership: An Integration of Multiple Perspectives

How may crisis leadership be developed prior to an organizational crisis occurring? I address this crucial question by reviewing and integrating three leadership perspectives when it comes to recruitment, selection, and training, in developing effective crisis leadership. Thereafter I introduce a fourth, higher-level perspective that represents a systemic approach to how crisis leadership may be developed in organizations. While crisis leadership is often perceived as something “leaders are born with” or as variant of general leadership, this notion may leave to chance who becomes leaders in a crisis, as well as the development of crisis leadership before a crisis occurs. This not only contradicts research on what constitutes effective crisis leadership, it is also potentially unethical in terms of the enormous consequences ineffective leadership in response to a crisis might have. The intention behind this article is to provide researchers with an integrative overview of what we know about crisis leaders...