Coping, Not Choking, Under the Pressure of a Terrorist Attack: A Crisis Leadership Coping Model

Organizational crises, especially those of an extreme nature that include threats to survival and mass casualties, are deeply psychologically challenging for leaders. Previous research has focused on the effectiveness of leaders’ crisis management without much consideration for how leaders manage their own crisis reactions. This study was carried out in the crisis management facilities at the headquarters of a multinational energy corporation while a terrorist attack was ongoing in one of its subsidiaries. The unique access and data provide insights into how leaders react to crises and seek support by using different coping strategies. We develop a three-phase model (acceptance, psychological flexibility, and commitment) that illustrates the in-situ creation of a holding environment to support leaders in coping, not choking, under the pressure of a life-threatening crisis.

Daily Self-Leadership and Playful Work Design: Proactive Approaches of Work in Times of Crisis

This study investigates how employees may use proactive work strategies to satisfy their basic psychological needs during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We use self-determination theory to hypothesize that daily self-leadership (e.g., goal setting, constructive cognition) and playful work design (PWD; redesigning work to be more fun/challenging) satisfy basic psychological needs and facilitate job performance. We also predict that the use of these proactive strategies is particularly important when individuals ruminate a lot about the COVID-19 crisis. Daily diary data collected among a heterogeneous group of employees largely confirm these theoretical predictions. For organizational practitioners, this study thus suggests that it is important to encourage employees to be proactive. Although this may be challenging during crises, leaders could provide autonomy and feedback to foster self-leadership and PWD. In addition, organizations may offer training interventions so that employees learn to apply these proactive work strategies.

Leadership and Follower Voice: The Role of Inclusive Leadership and Group Faultlines in Promoting Collective Voice Behavior

We developed and tested a theoretical model to examine how and when inclusive leadership affected collective voice behavior in this study. We identified two voice-relevant mediators—group psychological safety (an emergent state) and information elaboration (a group process) to clarify the mechanisms between inclusive leadership and collective voice behavior. Further, according to the person–situation interaction approach, we brought the faultlines theory to the inclusive leadership literature and considered group faultlines as a positive moderator to maximize the effects of inclusive leadership. With a two-wave, two-source design, we collected data from 301 employees within 67 research and development groups in China. We found that inclusive leadership positively affected collective voice behavior through the mediating mechanisms of both group psychological safety and information elaboration. Additionally, this effect was stronger in high faultlines situation. The findings suggest that leaders should show inclusiveness to motivate collective voice, especially in groups with high faultlines.

Family, Work, Collegial, and Emotional Influences on Problem-Focused Voice Behaviors

This study details the unexplored connection between employees’ exposure to family incivility and voice behavior to pinpoint organization problems, considering the mediating role of their work engagement and the moderating role of their emotion sharing with colleagues in this connection. Survey data obtained from employees who work in the banking sector reveal that a critical reason rude treatment by family members keeps employees from expressing their opinions about organizational shortcomings at work is that they exhibit limited positive work energy. This explanatory role of work engagement is less salient though when employees can draw on the relational resource of emotion sharing. For organizational change professionals, this study accordingly showcases a core explanation, thwarted work engagement, by which family-related hardships prevent employees from undertaking productive problem-focused voice activities, and it explicates how this mechanism can be subdued if the work environment encourages employees to express personal feelings openly to their peers.

Success Talk: Narrative Accounts of Organizational Change

Based on evidence from narrative accounts of organizational change, the potential of dialogic approaches that privilege joint construction of both change challenges and interventions appears very promising. This evidence also demystifies the notion of “well-planned” change, may further strengthen moves away from n-step programmatic approaches to change intervention, reminds readers of the importance of procedural fairness, and invites further research in terms of collective leadership. Where retrospective stories through which participants distinguished perceived success and failure provide the data for analysis, it is important that findings are understood within a narrative rather than an objective frame of reference.

A Compelling Beginning and More to Uncover

The article by Hastings and Schwarz, Leading Change Processes for Success: A Dynamic Application of Diagnostic and Dialogic Organization Development (OD), deserves close review by scholars and practitioners. Their research supports arguments that OD approaches can be meaningfully categorized as diagnostic or dialogic and that differences in those approaches have significant implications for organizational change success rates. Concerns about how one assesses a leader's mindset and counterpoints to the conclusion that oscillation between diagnostic and dialogic approaches is always associated with higher success rates are presented.

Looking at Team Improvised Adaptation Through a Paradoxical Lens: The Role of Team Plasticity

When time is of the essence and teams face unexpected contextual changes, they must adapt quickly, sometimes even in real time, that is, they may have to improvise. This paper adopts an inductive approach to explore how teams decide to engage in improvised adaptation, and what happens during those processes for improvisation to be successful. The study analyzes improvisation from the perspective of paradox theory and identifies six paradoxical tensions driven by these contexts: deployment, development, temporal, procedural, structural, and behavioral tensions. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of team improvised adaptation that leads to team plasticity. By properly managing the paradoxical tensions emerging from the convergence of design and execution, teams become more plastic and able to cope with sudden change. These findings contribute to adaptation and improvisation literatures by delving into the adaptation process under the temporal and material confluence of design and execution.

Leader Tolerance of Ambiguity: Implications for Follower Performance Outcomes in High and Low Ambiguous Work Situations

Individuals high in tolerance of ambiguity (TOA) are comfortable with, desire, and strive to manage ambiguous situations. We predicted leader TOA would be associated with better follower performance outcomes, depending on the level (Study 1) and nature (Study 2) of follower role ambiguity. Data were collected from employees (Study 1, n = 423) and managerial employees (Study 2, n = 326) who rated their leader on three facets of TOA and provided self-reports of their own performance outcomes. Positive implications of leader TOA for follower learning goal orientation and job performance (Study 1) were most pronounced when followers perceived low role ambiguity and, in the prediction of situational coping (Study 2), when ambiguous work situations were categorized as challenges (unexpected events requiring problem-solving) compared to hindrances. Findings have theoretical implications for understanding when TOA in leaders is optimal and have practical relevance for leaders seeking to adapt to the situational needs of their followers.