Introduction: The Clash of the Romance of Leadership with Real Practice During Crisis

Board life has been quite underexplored, particularly during crisis. Closeness to decision-making processes benefits our understanding of root causes behind Boards’ behaviors during crisis. Thus, despite the difficult access to the Boardroom, research in this space entails primary qualitative enquiry. Crisis, almost by definition, boosts uncertainty. The combination of larger external uncertainty (e.g., new pandemics or an unexpected war) and increased internal uncertainty (e.g., technological or cyclical economic crisis) ends up fostering new sentiments, as fear. Fear is, in a way, the new Zeitgeist underlying our age. Fear is not, however, something managers have the luxury to talk about. There is a social vulgata assuming executives or politicians have quasi-magic attributes making them invulnerable. Managers decide individually, but they do it within a social context, and are notably influenced by it. In fact, the perception Boards have about crisis is socially enacted. The regulatory and institutional pressure around Boards is today even tougher than during the last financial crisis, affecting real leeway of Directors, particularly in some very regulated industries. This view of crisis might explain why, regardless of crisis severity, Boards react in idiosyncratic ways, influenced by their collective perception. We will revisit here four main areas of crisis: (a) crisis as a social enactment process, something relevant considering the new meaning of crisis as a persisting phenomenon, (b) Boardroom short-termism and how decision-making time orientation may be altered by crisis, (c) Board increased risk of centralization and control, inherent to higher uncertainty, and (d), the increased opportunism and parochialism at Boards under crisis.