Leadership During Crisis: An Examination of Supervisory Leadership Behavior and Gender During COVID-19.

Gender and evaluations of leadership behaviors: A meta-analytic review of 50 years of research

A supervisor's behaviour may not be the only factor that determines the performance of team members (Kerr & Jermier, 1978). Taking this postulation as a basis, we formulated a model to describe how service climate moderates the effects of the leadership behaviour of supervisors. When the organization and working environment are not conducive to providing a good service to colleagues and customers, the supervisor's leadership behaviour makes an important difference. However, when the service climate is good, a supervisor's leadership behaviour makes no substantial difference. This hypothesis was supported in an examination of the service quality of 511 frontline service providers as sampled from 55 work groups in 6 service organizations. The employee service quality was low when both the service climate and the supervisor's leadership behaviour were lacking. However, when the service climate was unfavourable, effective leadership behaviour played a compensatory role in maintaining performance standards towards external customers. When the leadership was ineffective, a favourable service climate nullified the negative effect on service quality to internal customers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between leadership behavior and subordinate morale.A leadership survey (PM leadership survey questionnaire-Misumi et al., 1970) was administered to employees of a bank five times at 15 month intervals. All bank employees described their own morale and the Performance-oriented and Maintenance-oriented leadership behavior of their immediate supervisor. There were 287 groups for which the supervisor changed between successive surveys and 159 groups for which the supervisor did not change. The average size of each work group, including the supervisor, was 7 people.The main results were as follows:For altered groups, there is no significant correlation between former supervisor, s and successor, s Poriented or M-oriented scores (P. 07; M. 11) while for non-altered groups the correlation between successive surveys is high (P. 64; M. 57). A similar pattem is found between morale scores on successive surveys (altered groups . 23; non-altered groups . 43). Within the altered groups there is a positive correlation between the degree of change in perceived leadership scores and subordinate morale (P. 50; M. 67). These results suggest that supervisor leadership behavior affects subordinate morale to a greater extent than subordinate morale affects supervisor leadership behavior.A Log-LiRear Model was applied to results from the altered groups to further analyze the relationship between the new supervisor's P-M leadership type and subordinate morale scores across successive surveys. Tests for first-degree interactions show a strong relationship between the new supervisor's leadership behavior type and the following year, s subordinate morale. A weaker relatiohship exists between the new supervisor's leadership behavior and the previous year's subordinate morale.The results indicate that although subordinate morale tends to affect leadership behavior, the force of leadership behavior on subordinate morale is much stronger. This supports the assumption of PM leadership theory.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, managers and employees in many organizations suddenly are forced to work from home. Although working from home (WFH) is not a new phenomenon, it is new in its current scale and scope because of COVID-19. Against this background, we investigate the effect of WFH during the COVID-19 crisis on changes in leadership behaviors, and associated changes in perceived manager quality and productivity, at different hierarchical levels in organizations. Based on the literature, we develop two predictions in opposite directions. On the one hand, implementing WFH may force managers to show less direction and control and especially more delegation. On the other hand, research into the effects of exogenous shocks such as COVID-19, suggests that managers may become more controlling and delegate less. Consistent with the first prediction, we find that managers perceive they execute significantly less control and delegate more. Employees also perceive a significant decrease in control, however they perceive on average no change in delegation. Furthermore, and in line with the second prediction, employees of lower-level managers even report a significant decrease in delegation. Finally, our results show that increased delegation is associated with increased perceived productivity and higher manager quality. Together, these results suggest that in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, the effectiveness of WFH might be hampered by the fact that required changes in leadership behaviors, in particular in delegation, are difficult to realize in times of crisis.

The COVID‐19 crisis brought numerous challenges to work life. One of the most notable may be the acceleration of digital transformation, accompanied by an intensification of e‐mail usage and related demands such as high e‐mail workload. While research quickly started to examine the implications of these changes for employees, another important group of stakeholders has been overlooked: leaders. We focus on leaders during the COVID‐19 crisis and examine how COVID‐19‐related work intensification links to leaders' e‐mail overload appraisal and finally exhaustion and transformational leadership, a leader behaviour especially needed in times of crisis. In a 5‐day diary study in September 2020, 84 leaders responded to daily surveys on 343 days. Results of multilevel analysis showed that perceived COVID‐19‐related work intensification was positively linked to worktime spent dealing with e‐mail and appraised e‐mail overload. E‐mail overload appraisal was positively related to leaders' exhaustion, but unrelated to their transformational behaviour. Day‐specific time spent dealing with e‐mail, however, was negatively related to transformational leadership. E‐mail overload appraisal mediated the relationship between COVID‐19‐related work intensification and exhaustion. Turning the focus on leaders during the COVID‐19 crisis, our study has important implications for the design of work of leaders in times of crisis and beyond.

The aim of this study was to identify specific management practices that promote the psychological health of remote workers in the context of the COVID‐19 crisis. A two‐round Delphi study was conducted among 28 teleworkers and 22 managers. A list of 60 specific management practices was presented and participants had to identify whether each one could be used in the current remote working context and, if so, how useful it was to promote psychological health at work. Results indicate that most specific management practices usually used in a face‐to‐face setting can also be used in a remote context (85%). Practices that show consideration, establishing work structure, and allowing flexibility were also identified as the most useful to promote remote workers' psychological health during the pandemic. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge about specific management practices, remote working, and crisis management. It also suggests specific practices that managers can adopt to promote the psychological health of their employees during a period of crisis, even while managing from a distance.

This study examined 74 deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) and 91 hearing high school students regarding their own occupational aspirations and their evaluations of occupational competence (EOCs) for deaf adults. In the EOC, participants rated the suitability of 25 occupations (varying according to prestige and required level of communication) for deaf men and women. The results showed that occupations requiring intensive communication levels, regardless of their prestige, were evaluated as much less suitable for deaf individuals than were those requiring less communication. D/HH adolescents did not find highly prestigious occupations as suitable for deaf adults even when communication barriers were irrelevant. Both D/HH and hearing participants expressed biased evaluations of deaf women's competence, but no further evidence emerged for stereotypic attitudes. Higher educational aspirations among hearing adolescents, especially hearing males, correlated with a higher EOC of deaf adults. No such associations emerged for D/HH participants. No gender effects emerged. Implications of these outcomes for career development, especially for females, were discussed.

BACKGROUND: We only believe the components of our study, namely: the subject (the organizational configuration), the circumstance (COVID-19), and the context (Tunisia) together constitute the originality of our research. Indeed, to our knowledge, no study has been carried out so far on the typical configurations for managing the COVID-19 crisis in a Tunisian context. We think, therefore, that we are the first to do so. OBJECTIVE: In a context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis which is currently affecting our planet and which has had a huge impact on all levels (health, economic and social), our research seeks make a further contribution to the study of organizational configurations or archetypes in the field of crisis management. More specifically, our research principally aims, on the one hand, to describe the forms taken by organizations when they are facing a crisis of great magnitude such as - the COVID-19 crisis - and on the other hand, to identify a taxonomy making it possible to highlight the recurring axes of action on which the actors rely to manage a crisis. METHODS: Our methodological framework is based on the phenomenological paradigm in the human sciences which integrates the meaning given by man to the world around him [1] and which takes into account the subjectivity of the actors. Our positioning in favor of the phenomenological paradigm leads to the adoption of a qualitative research method. At this level, we carried out twenty-four semi-structured interviews in twenty Tunisian companies that were able to resist during the pandemic COVID-19 crisis and have managed to last at least until the present day. RESULTS: We identified three archetypes on the basis of five organizational factors that we inspired from the onion model of [2] and qualified it as configuration “determinants”, namely: strategy, structure, culture, leadership, and people. These archetypes are: the humanist communitarian, the perfectionist mobilizer, and the incrementalist pragmatic. CONCLUSIONS: We therefore believe that our research has enriched the configurational perspective by defining archetypes capable of managing a major crisis such as the COVID-19 crisis. The archetypes thus identified in our study may constitute typical models to be followed by companies wishing to resist the health crisis that is not yet over and whose repercussions can last for a long time.

BackgroundResearch from outside the medical field shows that leadership behaviours influence job satisfaction. Whether the same is true for the medical training setting needs to be explored. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of residents’ overall appreciation of their supervisor’s leadership and observation of specific supervisor leadership behaviours on job satisfaction.MethodsWe invited residents (N = 117) to rate how often they observed certain task and relation-oriented leadership behaviours in their supervisor and overall appreciation of their supervisor’s leadership. Furthermore, they rated their satisfaction with 13 different aspects of their jobs on a 10-point scale. Using exploratory factor analysis we identified four factors covering different types of job satisfaction aspects: personal growth, autonomy, affective, and instrumental job satisfaction aspects. Influence of overall appreciation for supervisor leadership and observation of certain leadership behaviours on these job satisfaction factors were analysed using multiple regression analyses.ResultsThe affective aspects of job satisfaction were positively influenced by overall appreciation of leadership (B = 0.792, p = 0.017), observation of specific instructions (B = 0.972, p = 0.008) and two-way communication (B = 1.376, p = 0.008) and negatively by mutual decision-making (B = −1.285, p = 0.007). No effects were found for the other three factors of job satisfaction.ConclusionsWe recommend that supervisors become more aware of whether and how their behaviours influence residents’ job satisfaction. Especially providing specific instructions and using two-way communication seem important to help residents deal with their insecurities and to offer them support.

The research aims to identify the most promising regulatory and marketing tools for business risk management in the COVID-19 crisis and develop recommendations for improving the practice of these tools from a post-pandemic perspective. This paper is devoted to the scientific search for answers to two research questions: RQ1: What tactical tools of business risk management are most effective in the COVID-19 crisis? RQ2: How to carry out strategic risk management of the business from a post-COVID perspective? The authors perform dataset modeling of business risks in the COVID-19 crisis and data analysis of the post-pandemic perspective of managing these risks, relying on data for 2016–2023, reflecting international experience in a representative sample. The key conclusion of this research is that the most complete and effective business risk management in times of COVID-19 crisis requires the integrated application of tools of state and corporate governance, that is, two-tier management: At the state and business levels. On this basis, the authors recommended applying the systemic approach to business risk management in times of the COVID-19 crisis, which includes a set of the most effective regulatory (financial support from the state budget and protectionism) and marketing (use of big data and analytics) tools of business risk management. The practical significance of the research results is that the recommended systemic approach to using regulatory and marketing tools can improve the effectiveness of tactical and strategic risk management in the COVID-19 crisis, thereby increasing business resilience to this crisis. The novelty is due to the fact that we selected the most effective tools of business risk management under the conditions of the COVID-19 crisis and proved the necessity to combine the tools of state and corporate management, which are substantiated, for the first time, not as mutually interchangeable, but complementary practices of risk management in the unique context of the COVID-19 crisis.

Leadership in organizations is important in shaping workers' perceptions, responses to organizational change, and acceptance of innovations, such as evidence-based practices. Transformational leadership inspires and motivates followers, whereas transactional leadership is based more on reinforcement and exchanges. Studies have shown that in youth and family service organizations, mental health providers' attitudes toward adopting an evidence-based practice are associated with organizational context and individual provider differences. The purpose of this study was to expand these findings by examining the association between leadership and mental health providers' attitudes toward adopting evidence-based practice. Participants were 303 public-sector mental health service clinicians and case managers from 49 programs who were providing mental health services to children, adolescents, and their families. Data were gathered on providers' characteristics, attitudes toward evidence-based practices, and perceptions of their supervisors' leadership behaviors. Zero-order correlations and multilevel regression analyses were conducted that controlled for effects of service providers' characteristics. Both transformational and transactional leadership were positively associated with providers' having more positive attitudes toward adoption of evidence-based practice, and transformational leadership was negatively associated with providers' perception of difference between the providers' current practice and evidence-based practice. Mental health service organizations may benefit from improving transformational and transactional supervisory leadership skills in preparation for implementing evidence-based practices.

PurposeThe study of women business founders provides an opportunity to determine their unique leadership characteristics. Starting a business may be a way for women business owners to be authentic and create more people-centered businesses. Servant leadership’s gender integrative attributes where both agentic and communal behaviors are valued may be more congruent and reflective of the leadership behaviors of women entrepreneurs. Recently, the motivation of compassionate love was theorized to be an antecedent to servant leadership and, it is argued, exists in conjunction with authenticity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate compassionate love, authenticity and servant leadership and determine whether they exist in the behaviors of founding female business owners.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative research study used summative content analysis of telephone interviews conducted with 12 women business owners of professional service firms in four US states to determine whether these women’s motivations, traits and behaviors were consistent with the compassionate love servant leadership model and whether authenticity was the cornerstone of servant leadership.FindingsThe analyses found that these women revealed a strong authenticity orientation as they enacted a compassionate love servant leadership style within their businesses. Themes that emerged from the study were agency, calling, humility, trust and respect, self-development, stewardship, authenticity and providing direction. The study revealed support for some of the characteristics associated with compassionate love servant leadership and two characteristics which were unique to this study.Research limitations/implicationsAs a qualitative study of 12 individuals, these findings may not be generalizable beyond the four US states of professional service enterprises of women business founders. Future research should test the full servant leadership model of women business owners on a larger group of business founders and the sub-themes where little support exists.Practical implicationsThe more gender integrative style of compassionate love servant leadership may be beneficial for women owners to employ as business leaders.Originality/valueThis research revealed support for a variation of compassionate love servant leadership model. The resulting servant leadership model herein was a mixture of agentic and communal leadership motivations, traits and behaviors useful to women business founders. Behaviors of authenticity were found to complement compassionate love. These women were able to extend the boundaries of what it means to be a leader and incorporate behaviors associated with both their gender and leadership roles, thus expanding their ability to successfully empower and equip themselves to navigate barriers unique to women leaders.

This article examines the transformation of management control, which has traditionally been regarded as a support function, into a central strategic lever in times of crisis. The study is focused on three core areas: the impact of management control mechanisms on organisational performance; their role in facilitating adaptation in a crisis context; and the influence of adopting new control tools on the company’s strategic direction. The research utilises a quantitative approach and is based on a sample of 97 companies across various sectors and sizes, ensuring diverse representation via non-stratified random sampling. Statistical techniques employed include Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Tests, quantile regression, and Spearman's correlation coefficients to validate the hypotheses. The findings demonstrate that management control is a key factor in enhancing performance, organisational resilience, and the implementation of a proactive strategy. Specifically, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were shown to enable companies to anticipate risks, seize opportunities, and strengthen their competitive advantage during crises. However, several limitations remain. These include the relatively small sample size, which restricts generalizability, the specific nature of the crises under study (COVID-19 crisis) and the potential for respondent bias, as most participants were senior executives or management controllers. These factors highlight the need for further research, particularly the exploration of additional crisis contexts and the use of mixed methodologies for a more comprehensive analysis.

The images of political leaders are affected by various factors such as their personality traits, leadership skills, behaviors, and attitudes. In times of crisis, the communication skills, leadership skills, and decision-making processes of political leaders are of great importance. The extraordinary situations brought about by the global pandemic constituted the focus of this study in order to determine and compare the behaviors of leaders in both ordinary and extraordinary conditions. In the study, the biographies, relevant scientific research, media, and official statements of the leaders of countries such as Germany, America, China, England, and Russia were transferred to the NVivo 10 program and examined, considering their pre-pandemic situations. The findings obtained reveal that the behaviors of leaders in ordinary and extraordinary situations vary. Angela Merkel moved away from stability during the period of uncertainty; Vladimir Putin maintained his authoritarian and oppressive leadership, but shifted from ideological leadership to pragmatic leadership. Boris Johnson, while defined as an ideological leader, has occasionally exhibited pragmatic behaviors. Donald Trump, on the other hand, adopted a pragmatic approach in ordinary times, but tried to strengthen this approach even further in extraordinary times.

PurposeRole congruity theory and gender stereotypes research suggests men are expected to engage in agentic behavior and women in communal behavior as leaders, and that role violation results in backlash. However, extant gender and leadership research does not directly measure expectations–behavior incongruence. Further, researchers have only considered one condition of role incongruence – display of counter-role behavior – and have not considered the outcomes of failing to exhibit role-congruent behavior. Additionally, few studies have examined outcomes for male leaders who violate gender role prescriptions. The present study aims to address these shortcomings by conducting a novel empirical test of role congruity theory.Design/Methodology/approachThis experimental study used polynomial regression to assess how followers evaluated leaders under conditions of incongruence between follower expectations for men and women leaders’ behavior and leaders’ actual behavior (i.e. exceeded and unmet expectations). Respondents read a fictional scenario describing a new male or female supervisor, rated their expectations for the leader’s agentic and communal behavior, read manipulated vignettes describing the leader’s subsequent behavior, rated their perceptions of these behaviors, and evaluated the leader.FindingsFollowers expected higher levels of communal behavior from the female than the male supervisor, but no differences were found in expectations for agentic behavior. Regardless of whether expectations were exceeded or unmet, supervisor gender did not moderate the effects of agentic or communal behavior expectations–perceptions incongruence on leader evaluations in polynomial regression analyses (i.e. male and female supervisors were not evaluated differently when displaying counter-role behavior or failing to display role-congruent behavior).Originality/valueIn addition to providing a novel, direct test of role congruity theory, the study highlighted a double standard in gender role-congruent behavior expectations of men and women leaders. Results failed to support role congruity theory, which has implications for the future of theory in this domain.