The Moderating Role of Leadership Behavior Between Crisis Management and Corporate Reputation in Airline Organizations
by HAVADER Editör Ekibi
What determines how a company's reputation is affected during a crisis — a flight cancellation, news of a technical fault — isn't just "how well the crisis was handled," but also the leadership style behind that handling. This study tests that relationship in airline organizations.
Airlines operate with high operational interdependence and low tolerance for error, making a crisis's organizational consequences far more visible than in other sectors. This study's goal was to test whether leadership behavior moderates the relationship between perceived crisis-management quality and corporate reputation.
Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression on 408 valid questionnaires from cabin crew at airlines operating in Türkiye showed perceived crisis-management quality positively predicts corporate reputation. But the truly interesting finding was this: democratic leadership behavior strengthens that relationship, while autocratic and laissez-faire leadership weaken it.
What this study contributes is showing crisis management isn't purely a technical procedure — how it's handled matters just as much as what's done. An everyday analogy: it's similar to how a family comes together during a crisis, like a health scare — one family that takes a collaborative approach, hearing everyone out and communicating openly, comes out of the crisis with stronger bonds; another that lurches forward chaotically under one person's control (or no one's) sees its trust erode.
In the end, this research shows airline managers need to invest in leadership style alongside technical crisis preparedness — a democratic, participatory leadership approach can get a company through the same crisis with far less reputational damage.
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Airlines operate with high operational interdependence and low tolerance for error, making a crisis's organizational consequences far more visible than in other sectors. This study's goal was to test whether leadership behavior moderates the relationship between perceived crisis-management quality and corporate reputation.
Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression on 408 valid questionnaires from cabin crew at airlines operating in Türkiye showed perceived crisis-management quality positively predicts corporate reputation. But the truly interesting finding was this: democratic leadership behavior strengthens that relationship, while autocratic and laissez-faire leadership weaken it.
What this study contributes is showing crisis management isn't purely a technical procedure — how it's handled matters just as much as what's done. An everyday analogy: it's similar to how a family comes together during a crisis, like a health scare — one family that takes a collaborative approach, hearing everyone out and communicating openly, comes out of the crisis with stronger bonds; another that lurches forward chaotically under one person's control (or no one's) sees its trust erode.
In the end, this research shows airline managers need to invest in leadership style alongside technical crisis preparedness — a democratic, participatory leadership approach can get a company through the same crisis with far less reputational damage.