Leadership, Strategy, and Management: A Qualitative Study of Crisis Surviva

The increasing number of crises within the past couple of decades has led to the demise of many organizations. An exhaustive literature review was conducted and revealed a gap in the understanding of small business crisis survival. The review uncovered three unique concepts of crisis management in the form of crisis leadership, crisis strategic management, and organizational crisis management. However, there is no research showing the examination of these concepts in the survival of small businesses faced with a crisis. The literature review further exposed a lack of qualitative research in crisis management with even less studies focusing on small businesses impacted by crises. To bridge the gap in this understanding the following question was proposed, "How do small business leaders, having survived a business crisis, describe the crisis leadership, strategic management, and organizational crisis management they employed to ensure the survival of the business?" Based on this gap in understanding a decision was made to use a generic qualitative inquiry. Using this methodology with open-ended questions a narrative response was evoked creating a rich set of data. The population encompasses all small business leaders that have survived a business crisis. The sample consisted of 15 small business leaders from the southeastern region of the United States who had successfully guided their respective business through a crisis. The data collected was first analyzed using narrative analysis to sequence and organize each narrative into a structured form for theme recognition. The data was then analyzed using thematic analysis to determine the usage of crisis leadership, organizational crisis management, and strategic crisis management within the survival of a small business crisis. The data revealed a strong correlation between the experiences of small business leaders survival of a crisis with that of crisis leadership, strategic management, and organizational crisis management in comparison to those constructs reported in the literature. In addition to the strong correlation, leaders reported the following central theme as key to their success: small business survival is dependent on sustained cash flow, which is dependent on consistent workflow, which is dependent on strong favorable relationships with customers. These findings aided in bridging the gap of understanding between the crisis management concepts and the crisis survival of small businesses by creating a point for future research to build on.