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Leadership Style and Crisis Management

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Boin, A., P.‘t Hart., A. McConell and T. Preston. (2010). Leadership style, crisis response and blame management: The case of hurricane Katrina. The Journal of Public Administration, 88(3), 706-725

In this paper I have summarized the article and offer comments on where additional research would assist in further understanding of the issue. The authors of this article used retrospective review which uses existing data and researches. Leadership style and crisis management have always been the main topics in the wake of a disaster and are always a debate topic between the public and the politicians in power. The reason this article seemed more interesting is that I personally followed up on all the media coverage on the issue of …show more content…

But at times of crisis the way leaders respond and how quick and efficient they decide when people’s life and safety is at risk is a measure of how successful they are. In the case of Hurricane Katrina media coverage on desperate people trapped in superdome, in anticipation of rescue, were the measure of leaders failure in the public eye. Political leaders have also much more attention from the media therefore it is vital to engage in mindful blame management strategies. Dealing with the aftermath of the crisis is also important assessment of the government. For instance, as it is mentioned in the article President Bush did not visit New Orleans, he rather flew over the affected area, and this act clearly did not help his image and made him look insensitive and careless.
Article Limitations This article focuses mainly on only one particular situation and that can not be generalized to various critical situations political leaders may face during their leadership period. It also indicates that every leadership style would leave the leader vulnerable to some sort of blame attribution post crisis; what it does not identify is whether or not there is a link between leadership characteristics and the leader’s blame management strategies. It would be beneficial to see some research in that area, hence future research could look at different leadership style in diverse emergency situations and the leaders’ management

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