Leadership strategy and organisational resilience among Kenyan listed banks

This study aimed to test the effect of leadership strategy on the organisational resilience of banks listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. The study was anchored on Full-Range Leadership Theory (FRLT) complementarily with meta-leadership as relevant theoretical lenses. The study sampled 277 respondents holding senior managerial positions such as Chief Risk Officers, Managing Directors, Directors of Strategy, Internal Auditors, Heads of Marketing, Heads of Operations and Branch Managers. Data was collected using a self-administered Likert-type online questionnaire. Structural equations modelling was employed for statistical analysis. Partial Least Squares was performed with SmartPLS 3. Results showed that the relationship between leadership strategy and organisational resilience was statistically significant at t-value of 31.665 (p<0.05), with leadership strategy explaining 68.5% of the variance in the organisational resilience of listed banks in Kenya (R2=0.685). The study concluded that leadership strategy significantly predicted bank resilience. The study has affirmed leadership strategy as a novel theoretical concept for explaining organisational resilience to systemic disruptive shocks. Multiple future research directions are proposed. This study advanced leadership strategy as a distinct paradigm in leadership thinking by examining its predictive power on organisational resilience by using systemic disruptive shocks as testing grounds within the context of Kenya’s banking sector.