ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP AND MULTILEVEL RESILIENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF CRISIS
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Аннотация
INTRODUCTION 6
CHAPTER 1. ADAPTIVE LEDERSHIP AND RESILIENCE CONCEPTS:
THEORETICAL DISCLOSURE 10
1.1. Defining Multilevel Resilience 10
1.1.1. The origins of the concept: Personal Psychological Resilience 11
1.1.2. Employee Resilience 14
1.1.3. Resilience of Teams 17
1.1.4. Organizational Resilience 20
1.2. Leadership for Resilience 24
1.2.1. Adaptive Leadership framework 25
1.2.2. Adaptive Leadership and Multilevel Resilience: hypothesis development 30
1.2.3. Empirical model 35
CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH DESIGN 36
2.1. Methodology 36
2.1.1. Sample and data collection 36
2.1.2. Measures 38
2.1.3. Methods for testing hypotheses 39
2.2. Data analysis 40
2.2.1. Data screening 40
2.2.2. Validity and Reliability 41
CHAPTER 3. THE INFLUENCE OF ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP ON MULTILEVEL
RESILIENCE: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL STUDY AND DUSCUSSION 44
3.1. Results of hypothesis testing 44
3.2. Main findings 47
3.3. Theoretical contribution 49
3.4. Managerial implications 50
3.5. Limitations and Future Research 51
REFERENCES 53
APPENDIX 1 68
INTRODUCTION 6
CHAPTER 1. ADAPTIVE LEDERSHIP AND RESILIENCE CONCEPTS:
THEORETICAL DISCLOSURE 10
1.1. Defining Multilevel Resilience 10
1.1.1. The origins of the concept: Personal Psychological Resilience 11
1.1.2. Employee Resilience 14
1.1.3. Resilience of Teams 17
1.1.4. Organizational Resilience 20
1.2. Leadership for Resilience 24
1.2.1. Adaptive Leadership framework 25
1.2.2. Adaptive Leadership and Multilevel Resilience: hypothesis development 30
1.2.3. Empirical model 35
CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH DESIGN 36
2.1. Methodology 36
2.1.1. Sample and data collection 36
2.1.2. Measures 38
2.1.3. Methods for testing hypotheses 39
2.2. Data analysis 40
2.2.1. Data screening 40
2.2.2. Validity and Reliability 41
CHAPTER 3. THE INFLUENCE OF ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP ON MULTILEVEL
RESILIENCE: RESULTS OF EMPIRICAL STUDY AND DUSCUSSION 44
3.1. Results of hypothesis testing 44
3.2. Main findings 47
3.3. Theoretical contribution 49
3.4. Managerial implications 50
3.5. Limitations and Future Research 51
REFERENCES 53
APPENDIX 1 68
We all lived in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment for a long time after the emergence of VUCA-world concept in post-Cold War period. However, events such as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and unexpected geopolitical issues make us aware that our world has changed over the past few years. The old VUCA-world was replaced by the BANI- world: brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible (Jamais Cascio on Institute of the Future event, 2020).
The same characteristics we apply to current business environment. In view of the events of the several last years, many organizations, quite unexpectedly, found themselves not just in a decline, but in a catastrophic state, and an impressive part of them went bankrupt. This made it clear that, in fact, none of us is immune from the most powerful crises and no matter how strong the basis of organizations may seem, they can all be fragile in the face of circumstances. From the realization of this and the inability to fully understand the situation, anxiety increases in front of the unknown future, in which, perhaps, new troubles will lead to irreparable losses. It becomes more difficult for organizations to build their long-term strategy, because it requires many exit routes in case of another crisis.
Past events stimulated growing interest in various topics within management science and particularly in development of organizational resilience in the face of crises. The general resilience in the business sphere can be divided into three parts: employee resilience, team resilience and the resilience of the whole organization. These phenomena have been studied separately, however, recently a new concept of multilevel resilience emerged in order to investigate the impact of one level to another and the influence of various factors on resilience across all levels in organization.
The quality of resilience implies many characteristics, but in general we can describe it as a capability to resist the adversities/crises and recover from them (Horne & Orr, 1998). Also, the presence of employee resilience, resilience of teams and organizational resilience is closely connected with various positive outcomes, for example, effectiveness, stability, creativity, innovation etc. But what’s more importantly is that resilience is associated with positive adaptation to change, which is especially in need during crisis, since crisis can be caused by a change and vice versa for overcoming a crisis some changes need to be done (Hartwig et al., 2020). All three levels of resilience are connected to each other and spread their influence both from bottom to top and from top to bottom. Moreover, since resilience is a capability, it is widely believed that it can be built, developed or enhanced (Kuntz, Naswall & Malinen, 2016). And in today's world, it's a good way for a business to try to construct a sort of protective barrier between the organization and devastating consequences of abrupt, unexpected changes in the external environment.
Many factors can have a positive effect on multilevel resilience, but the main interest for management science and business now is the question of how organizations within their own boundaries can increase their ability to cope with crises. In fact, there is an agreement among the scientific community that one of the organizational enablers of resilience is leadership (Kuntz, Naswall & Malinen, 2016). Leaders effect multilevel resilience through communication with employees and teams, effective management and guidance, goal setting, through their ability to help groups to overcome stress, develop a more positive attitude and make sense of the situation.
Each style of leadership has its own particular impact on resilience at all three levels. Today we can find lots of papers dedicated to investigation of the effects of different leadership styles on employee-level resilience. Among them are humble leadership (Zhu et al., 2019), transformational leadership (Harland et al., 2005., Sommer et al., 2016), supportive leadership (Cooke et al., 2019) and others. The amount of such kind of research in the field of team resilience and organizational resilience is extremely modest in comparison with employee-level resilience. Transformational and shared leadership styles have been explored in relation to team-level and only transformational and mindful leadership in relation to organizational-level (Vera, M., Rodriguez-Sanchez, A., Salanova, M., 2017; Salas-Vallina et al., 2022; Levey, 2019; Valero, Jung, & Andrew, 2015).
If we return to characteristics of the current business environment which is prone to unexpected crises and require rapid adaptation to change, we will understand that one of the most relevant leadership styles nowadays is an adaptive leadership. According to the concept developed by Heifetz in 1994 the need for adaptive leadership appears when the organization needs to overcome an adaptive challenge - such a difficult situation in which there is no solution for the problem in its entirety (Heifetz, 1994). Crisis in its sense is an event that is rare, urgent, significant, ambiguous, have a high impact and involve high stakes (Simola S., 2014). Therefore, it is definitely can be called an adaptive challenge, probably the most severe one.
During adaptive challenge every employee, team and a whole organization need to adapt to new circumstances, engage in learning process, focus on problem-solving, overcome stress caused by situation (Heifetz, 1994). All the mentioned processes from the one hand are guided by adaptive leaders, and from the other hand are conceptually connected with demonstrating resilience. Although, what appears missing is the empirical investigation on the relationship between these two constructs, despite the actuality and relevance of such research due to present characteristics of business environment.
Based on this the aim of our study is to identify the influence of adaptive leadership style on resilience at three level: employee-level resilience, team-level resilience and organization-level resilience in presence of crisis situation and adversity....
The same characteristics we apply to current business environment. In view of the events of the several last years, many organizations, quite unexpectedly, found themselves not just in a decline, but in a catastrophic state, and an impressive part of them went bankrupt. This made it clear that, in fact, none of us is immune from the most powerful crises and no matter how strong the basis of organizations may seem, they can all be fragile in the face of circumstances. From the realization of this and the inability to fully understand the situation, anxiety increases in front of the unknown future, in which, perhaps, new troubles will lead to irreparable losses. It becomes more difficult for organizations to build their long-term strategy, because it requires many exit routes in case of another crisis.
Past events stimulated growing interest in various topics within management science and particularly in development of organizational resilience in the face of crises. The general resilience in the business sphere can be divided into three parts: employee resilience, team resilience and the resilience of the whole organization. These phenomena have been studied separately, however, recently a new concept of multilevel resilience emerged in order to investigate the impact of one level to another and the influence of various factors on resilience across all levels in organization.
The quality of resilience implies many characteristics, but in general we can describe it as a capability to resist the adversities/crises and recover from them (Horne & Orr, 1998). Also, the presence of employee resilience, resilience of teams and organizational resilience is closely connected with various positive outcomes, for example, effectiveness, stability, creativity, innovation etc. But what’s more importantly is that resilience is associated with positive adaptation to change, which is especially in need during crisis, since crisis can be caused by a change and vice versa for overcoming a crisis some changes need to be done (Hartwig et al., 2020). All three levels of resilience are connected to each other and spread their influence both from bottom to top and from top to bottom. Moreover, since resilience is a capability, it is widely believed that it can be built, developed or enhanced (Kuntz, Naswall & Malinen, 2016). And in today's world, it's a good way for a business to try to construct a sort of protective barrier between the organization and devastating consequences of abrupt, unexpected changes in the external environment.
Many factors can have a positive effect on multilevel resilience, but the main interest for management science and business now is the question of how organizations within their own boundaries can increase their ability to cope with crises. In fact, there is an agreement among the scientific community that one of the organizational enablers of resilience is leadership (Kuntz, Naswall & Malinen, 2016). Leaders effect multilevel resilience through communication with employees and teams, effective management and guidance, goal setting, through their ability to help groups to overcome stress, develop a more positive attitude and make sense of the situation.
Each style of leadership has its own particular impact on resilience at all three levels. Today we can find lots of papers dedicated to investigation of the effects of different leadership styles on employee-level resilience. Among them are humble leadership (Zhu et al., 2019), transformational leadership (Harland et al., 2005., Sommer et al., 2016), supportive leadership (Cooke et al., 2019) and others. The amount of such kind of research in the field of team resilience and organizational resilience is extremely modest in comparison with employee-level resilience. Transformational and shared leadership styles have been explored in relation to team-level and only transformational and mindful leadership in relation to organizational-level (Vera, M., Rodriguez-Sanchez, A., Salanova, M., 2017; Salas-Vallina et al., 2022; Levey, 2019; Valero, Jung, & Andrew, 2015).
If we return to characteristics of the current business environment which is prone to unexpected crises and require rapid adaptation to change, we will understand that one of the most relevant leadership styles nowadays is an adaptive leadership. According to the concept developed by Heifetz in 1994 the need for adaptive leadership appears when the organization needs to overcome an adaptive challenge - such a difficult situation in which there is no solution for the problem in its entirety (Heifetz, 1994). Crisis in its sense is an event that is rare, urgent, significant, ambiguous, have a high impact and involve high stakes (Simola S., 2014). Therefore, it is definitely can be called an adaptive challenge, probably the most severe one.
During adaptive challenge every employee, team and a whole organization need to adapt to new circumstances, engage in learning process, focus on problem-solving, overcome stress caused by situation (Heifetz, 1994). All the mentioned processes from the one hand are guided by adaptive leaders, and from the other hand are conceptually connected with demonstrating resilience. Although, what appears missing is the empirical investigation on the relationship between these two constructs, despite the actuality and relevance of such research due to present characteristics of business environment.
Based on this the aim of our study is to identify the influence of adaptive leadership style on resilience at three level: employee-level resilience, team-level resilience and organization-level resilience in presence of crisis situation and adversity....
Although this study has many advantages and has made significant theoretical contributions and practical implications, it faces several limitations. The first limitation is related to the scope of our investigation. The results of the study are based on the answers of 148 respondents represented by employees working in organizations of different sizes operating in various industries, which allows us to test the hypotheses posed in the study and draw the appropriate conclusions, however, the current study do not cover industry-specific analysis. But we believe there are some differences in terms of resilience among organizat ions operating in different industries. For example, IT companies appeared to be more flexible in terms of consequences of COVID-19 pandemic, thus, resilience level of employees, teams and organizations as a whole may be higher, and, moreover, the remote work can impose some specifics into mechanisms of adaptive leadership influence on to multilevel resilience. Therefore, for further research we would recommend to focus on investigating the influence of adaptive leadership on multilevel resilience in the context of crisis across different industries in order to provide scientific community and management with more specified insights associated with organizations’ industries.
The second limitation is connected with the selected research design. The current research is quantitative and uses survey as a data collection tool and statistical methods for data analysis, which allowed us to test the theory and make general conclusions. However, we propose that conducting qualitative research using in-depth interviews as a research tool could shed light on many important details within the topic: for example, on the various mechanisms for building/developing resilience, the role of specific behaviors of adaptive leaders in this process etc.
The third limitation is that the study was conducted on the Russian market, which may impose some local specificity of results. Sociocultural characteristics play a fairly large role in research in the field of human recourse management and any other areas that deal with human behavior, communication and perception. Therefore, our study needs to be supplemented by investigations made in other countries and cultures. Moreover, it will be interesting to see some cross-cultural analysis in the future to assess the differences and country-specific character of the influence of adaptive leadership on multilevel resilience in times of adversity.
The second limitation is connected with the selected research design. The current research is quantitative and uses survey as a data collection tool and statistical methods for data analysis, which allowed us to test the theory and make general conclusions. However, we propose that conducting qualitative research using in-depth interviews as a research tool could shed light on many important details within the topic: for example, on the various mechanisms for building/developing resilience, the role of specific behaviors of adaptive leaders in this process etc.
The third limitation is that the study was conducted on the Russian market, which may impose some local specificity of results. Sociocultural characteristics play a fairly large role in research in the field of human recourse management and any other areas that deal with human behavior, communication and perception. Therefore, our study needs to be supplemented by investigations made in other countries and cultures. Moreover, it will be interesting to see some cross-cultural analysis in the future to assess the differences and country-specific character of the influence of adaptive leadership on multilevel resilience in times of adversity.
