A Comparison between the Styles of Transformational Leaders and Authentic Leaders in Crisis Management

Crisis leadership research is important owing to the unpredictability, cost, duration and intensity of the crisis. Leaders all around the world struggle with the challenges of crisis (Prewitt & Weil, 2014), which demonstrates the undeniable fact that leadership and crisis are closely intertwined. Therefore, the reaction of the leader towards the crisis is of utmost importance. Crises, which are simply defined as “unexpected and unpredictable circumstances that threaten the key mechanisms of a firm” (Barton, 1994), are an indispensable part of the workplace. Hence, managing crises has become a key responsibility of business leaders of the 21st century. Although there are various modern and postmodern leadership styles, this paper focuses on the styles of transformational and authentic leaders during crises. Though there is plenty of research on crisis and leadership, few studies and books were found which shed light upon transformational and authentic leaders’ behaviour in crisis situations. This study attempts to make a theoretical analysis of how transformational and authentic leaders behave during a crisis and make some inferences based on research on leadership styles and crisis leadership.