Resilient Leadership: Improvisation, Gardening and Unlearning

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defined COVID-19 pandemic as the worst crisis since the second world war. Being one of the countries that have been worst hit by the virus, Italy quickly went into lockdown, causing inestimable losses for the whole country (La Repubblica, 2020). More than others, the hospitality sector has suffered the most immediate repercussions of the pandemic. The measures for transmission containment that were prompted by the government and the fear of travelling that has spread internationally have stopped any event, conference, convention, sports league, and have drastically driving down tourism for both business and leisure. According to ENIT, with respect to 2019, flights booked to Italy during the 2020 peak season have dropped by almost 70%, while airport arrivals have declined by more than 60% due to antivirus restrictions. The hospitality sector has experienced a “true collapse” in the number of hotel guests: in March the Italian Federation of Hotel and Tourism Associations (Federalberghi) registered minus 92.3 percent among foreigners and minus 85.9 percent among Italians compared to the previous year. In April the market collapsed completely, with -97.8% foreigners (-94.8% registered in May; Federalberghi, 2020). As tourists disappeared, more than 118,000 seasonal jobs in tourism had already been lost in May 2020. Consequently, Italy will likely miss out on around 17 billion euro of income and, in accordance with ENIT’s estimate, tourism is not expected to recover until 2023. This extreme event has crafted a “new normal” that carried important social implications and evident organizational costs, calling leaders to fast action of the improvised type. Grounding on this, in our study “Improvising resilience: The unfolding of resilient leadership in COVID-19 times” published in 2021 in International Journal of Hospitality Management, we seek to address the following research question: How do hospitality leaders improvise resilience in practice while facing the shock caused by COVID-19?