Rethinking Crisis as Expected: Stakeholder Leadership in Navigating Ethical Dilemmas and Avoiding Polycrises

Extant literature on crises and crisis management is predominantly based on the assumption that crises are unexpected events. However, in the past two decades, we have noticed crises arrive continually, and experts have warned that we are prone to a range of crises, including climate change, migration, industrial incidents, and other crises of financial, cyber, reputational, social, and political nature. These recurring crises and warnings mean considering all crises as unexpected events is illusory and can lead organizations into polycrises, or systems of multiple, interconnected crises. We conducted a 17-month longitudinal case study on a nonprofit health care organization that faced the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that organizational leadership considered the crisis as an expected event, which helped the organization avoid purposeful ignorance and unintentional actions that could exacerbate a crisis or even develop into a polycrisis. Our study contributes to literature in three ways. First, it illustrates the dimensions of expected crises and their underlying ethical dilemmas. Second, we explain that organization’s purpose has a crucial role in helping leadership navigate ethical dilemmas during a crisis. Third, we identify three characteristics of stakeholder leadership: enfranchising new leaders, facilitation, and sharing in operational work. Our findings and framework offer three implications: (1) embrace an expected crisis, (2) emphasize purpose to navigate ethical dilemmas, and (3) adopt stakeholder leadership instead of centralized leadership.