Ca­m­illa Sløk

My re­search ex­am­ines the re­la­tion­ship between respons­ibility and guilt in lead­er­ship, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the ways in which lead­ers are of­ten ascribed guilt, even when such at­tri­bu­tions may be per­ceived by the lead­ers them­selves as un­just. Rather than ‘guilt’, lead­ers prefer to frame neg­at­ive in­cid­ents as er­rors. How­ever, lead­ers fre­quently be­come the fo­cal point of blame in or­gan­iz­a­tion­al or so­ci­et­al con­texts, not ne­ces­sar­ily be­cause of their dir­ect culp­ab­il­ity, but due to broad­er dy­nam­ics of ac­count­ab­il­ity and pub­lic per­cep­tion.

When or­gan­iz­a­tions ex­per­i­ence fail­ure, such as flawed ser­vice de­liv­ery or in­ad­equate in­ter­ven­tion in cases in­volving the neg­lect of vul­ner­able cit­izens, pub­lic dis­course of­ten cen­ters on identi­fy­ing and hold­ing a guilty party ac­count­able. My re­search in­vest­ig­ates the norm­at­ive and prac­tic­al ex­pect­a­tions placed upon lead­ers in re­spond­ing to such in­cid­ents, with par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to how respons­ibility is at­trib­uted, how blame is con­struc­ted, and how lead­ers are ex­pec­ted to nav­ig­ate the ten­sion between ac­count­ab­il­ity, per­son­al val­ues, and crisis com­mu­nic­a­tion.

My re­search since 2012 has fo­cused primar­ily on guilt and respons­ibility. I have found, that most lead­ers avoid the use of the word­ing "guilt" and rather prefer the concept of er­ror. Er­ror means that what happened was un­in­ten­tion­al How­ever, the man­ner in which lead­ers ad­dress er­rors has pro­found im­plic­a­tions for trust, le­git­im­acy, and or­gan­iz­a­tion­al re­si­li­ence. The de­vel­op­ment of re­con­cili­at­ory pro­cesses after er­rors not only mit­ig­ates repu­ta­tion­al dam­age but also cul­tiv­ates or­gan­iz­a­tion­al trust and psy­cho­lo­gic­al safety, both of which are es­sen­tial for long-term ad­apt­ab­il­ity and ef­fect­ive­ness.

In ad­di­tion, my re­search ex­plores crisis com­mu­nic­a­tion strategies as a means of re­spond­ing to ac­cus­a­tions of guilt and blame. This in­cludes ex­amin­ing how lead­ers con­struct nar­rat­ives to ex­plain or con­tex­tu­al­ize their ac­tions, how they en­gage in re­con­cili­at­ory com­mu­nic­a­tion with af­fected stake­hold­ers, and how they nav­ig­ate the ten­sion between ac­cept­ing respons­ibility and res­ist­ing un­fair at­tri­bu­tions of guilt.

Trans­form­a­tion­al lead­er­ship em­phas­izes care and con­sid­er­a­tion for em­ploy­ees and stake­hold­ers. How­ever, lead­ers are sim­ul­tan­eously ex­pec­ted to demon­strate care while also mak­ing dif­fi­cult, and at times un­pop­u­lar, de­cisions. My re­search is on how lead­ers nav­ig­ate this ten­sion, and the po­ten­tial risks and con­sequences when care is ab­sent in lead­er­ship prac­tice. The risk is that the lead­er be­comes de­tached from stake­hold­ers.