A study of c-suite leaders’ individualistic and collectivistic decision-making styles: elaborating on leaders’ efficacy during crises

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigated leaders’ decision-making during crises. Using grounded theory research, we explored whether leaders’ use of either individualistic or collectivistic decision-making styles is based on the context of a crisis. In addition, the authors looked into the components of building leaders’ efficacy during a crisis event and gauged their attitudinal and behavioral reactions to the crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted interviews with 30 C-suite executives during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine their responses to crises. The authors then used open, axial, and selective coding to examine their data, which was then extracted for representative themes and overarching dimensions. In total, The authors received 12 major themes largely summarizing into 6 overarching dimensions – context of decision-making, leaders’ efficacy, individualistic approach to decision-making, collectivistic approach to decision-making, process of decision-making, and outcomes.

Findings

The research presents a decision-making framework clearly bifurcating situations with the need for individualistic and collectivistic decision-making. While, a high level of urgency and scarce resources encouraged leaders to adopt an individualistic approach in which most of the decisions were intuition-based and only high-level stakeholders were involved, the less time urgent and uncertain situation allowed leaders to put significant effort into building their own knowledge systems and involving others. In addition, leaders’ efficacy is understood in terms of their attitudes, readiness and reactions, which further elaborated upon their knowledge systems to allow them to excel in decision-making irrespective of the approaches they chose.

Originality/value

The research has implications for leaders in the decision-making roles to be effective during both individualistic and collectivistic decision-making.