SRA-E Lisbon 2017

This study examines the role of the normalized narratives of leaders in crisis management. Our theoretical point of departure is that leader normativity legitimizes certain positions and actions in a crisis management narrative and marginalizes others. To explore such processes in narratives, we use feminist theory and critical management studies. The study shows that leader normativity creates gendered differences that result in both inequalities and the hiding of any parts of crisis management that do not apply to leader normativity. While mapping how leader normativity is narrated, the authors also want to write a politics of recognition of that which becomes excluded from crisis management as a result. The study shows that there is a strong norm for crisis management as an individualistic perspective that focuses on heroes and higher-level management as the people managing a crisis. Support for a way of describing crisis management as a collective achievement and caring perspectives become marginalized.