Leaders’ Shifts in Attention During an Organizational Crisis

This chapter presents the findings of an empirical research study into shifts in the attention of individual leaders within a top management team over three phases when resolving an evolving organizational crisis. The findings question the linear development of cognitive consensus over time. Initially, differences in how to respond to the crisis were found, which were replaced by consensus at the midpoint of data collection, but this consensus was only temporary. It seems that not all of the aftershocks of the crisis were fully understood, because later in the crisis diversity in beliefs were found again. We present an alternative method to help managers resolve differences and achieve consensus in how to resolve a crisis. We advocate analyzing individual differences in attention within causal cognitive maps to aid reflexivity to help in vision formation. This reflexive method has advantages when comparing similarities and differences in attention within individuals over time.