Contextual influences on leadership in emergency type organisations

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to further the theoretical understanding of leadership in emergency type organisations by modelling contextual aspects which are assumed to influence it. Design/methodology/approach -A theoretical analysis followed by an operationalisation of key concepts and two small-scale empirical cross-sectional tests. Findings -Contextual conditions at the group, organisation, and environmental levels that are assumed to influence leadership in emergency type organisations were modelled in lower-to higher-extent bipolar dimensions. An empirical test involving Scandinavian military officers (n ¼ 57) and Swedish health care (ambulance) professionals (n ¼ 39) yielded profiles for leaders at three different hierarchical levels during severely demanding operations: field-level group/team leaders; field-level commanders/managers; and high-level strategic commanders/managers. Considerable differences were found between the three profiles on scales designed to measure environmental and more structure-related organisational conditions. Almost no differences were noted on "softer" aspects such as organisational culture and small group characteristics.Research limitations/implications -The study focuses only on traditional hierarchical organisations that are designed to function in extreme conditions (the armed forces and acute health care). Practical implications -If empirically further tested and proved valid, the suggested model could be of value in leadership and organisational development efforts. Originality/value -The theoretical approach is new. The presented operationalisations open up for full-model tests of leadership models based on an interactional person-by-situation paradigm.

Contextual factors affecting moral stress: a study of military and police officers

“…The interviews consisted of broad open-ended questions and individually adapted follow-up questions. The interview themes were inspired by the model developed by Larsson and The armed forces The police Hyllengren (2013) and the informants were specifically asked to reflect upon the following themes:…”

“…A previous study (Larsson and Hyllengren, 2013) identified a number of contextual conditions affecting leadership in stressful missions of civilian and military first responders. These included: environmental aspects such as dynamic stressors (e.g.…”

The nexus of transformational leadership of emergency services systems

“…Recently, recent literature has given special attention on the importance of emergency leadership in organizational resilience (Hills, 2015;De Florio, 2014;Moe, 2012), as well as contextual aspects of leadership (Charman, 2015;Larsson and Hyllengren, 2013). Yet, there appears to be a paucity of literature that examines emergency leadership challenges from a strategic systems perspective (Caro, 2015;Karaca et al, 2012).…”

Towards transformational emergency systems leadership: A holonic perspective

“…The literature stresses the importance of leadership in inspiring and fostering mutual respect, open interprofessional communication, collaborative decision-making, all of which motivate a commitment to high quality systems of care. [27][28][29][30][31] Urby and McEntire (2015) [32] have underscored that transformational leaders are change agents that form the backbone of high-performing and effective systems that result in positive outcomes, such as lower mortality and morbidity rates, greater community resilience, higher quality of care. [33][34][35][36][37][38] 1.2 Holonic paradigms in emergency management systems This study proposes a holonic perspective of emergency leadership in the context of complex adaptive emergency management systems.…”