Seizing The Moment: How crisis contributes to changing culture - A bottom-up exploration of Crisis and Change leadership and their potential impact on building the desired Organisational Culture

The concepts of organizational crisis, change leadership and culture have continued to intrigue and excite academics as well as industry professionals for several decades. Researches in these disciplines have tended to focus on their impacts on upper echelons of the organizational hierarchies. This multi-phenomena qualitative case study sought to examine the relationships which exist between crisis, organisational culture and change leadership and their impact on middle to lower levels of organizational leadership. The paper proposes a conceptual framework which was developed on the back of an extensive literature review. The central premise is crisis by its very nature could potentially create a sense of urgency and ultimately serve as a conduit to spur change leadership initiatives and an effective change leadership can directly impact the creation of a desired Organisation culture. As a bottom up exploration of change leadership, the paper seeks to imbue in the psyche of lower to middle level managers that they have the opportunity to create culture with any crisis they could potentially face in their roles. The crisis creates a golden chance for them to expatiate on the change agenda to their direct reports and hopefully lead to a better team culture. There are clear links between crisis, change leadership and organizational culture creation. However, change managers and leaders must recognize the unique opportunity presented by the crisis event to ensure maximum benefits in terms of crafting the desired culture accrue to the Organisation