Rising Amidst Chaos: A Critical Review on Resilient Leadership in the Sri Lankan Apparel Industry during Covid-19

Abstract

The complex and fluctuating business environment, especially crisis situations such as Covid-19 pandemic demands the leaders of the entities to be more agile and empathetic, giving prominence to the utilization of a resilient style of leadership. Though the epidemic created difficulties and resulted some entities to fail, some organizations who were more flexible and adaptive successfully catapult to a recovery stage, showcasing the exemplary leadership in the entities. Thus, this study intends to understand the paradigm of resilient leadership that facilitated the organizations to thrive despite such catastrophically intense periods and the factors that influenced the emergence of such an effective style of leadership in the Sri Lankan apparel sector during the pandemic by conducting a critical review of literature with the utilization of research papers published from the year 2012 onwards. The findings of the study provides valuable insights on the new paradigm of leadership; resilient leadership and the paramount factors that impact resilient leadership in the Sri Lankan apparel industry such as personal characteristics and crisis situations. Based on the literature review, it can be realized that an individual’s personal characteristics such as empathy, communication skills, agility, hardiness, perseverance and the prevailing crisis situations in the dynamic business environment demands and fabricates resilient leadership in entities.