Upper Echelons’ Naturalistic Decision-Making and Top Management Team Macrocognition in a High Reliability Organization

The book analyzes crisis decision-making of a major German airline’s operational top management team during the Covid-19 crisis. The operational top manager’s relevant decision-making entity, the crisis management team, was faced with substantial time-critical decisions in volatile circumstances as well as the need to balance ambidextrous exigencies with the operation’s short-term survival as well as its future viability. The author applies her ethnographic perspective and develops an analysis based on the unique combination of naturalistic decision-making, top management team research, high reliability organizations and ambidexterity as well as team diversity. The work is targeted at both management professionals, as it identifies best pratices and learnings from a polycrisis case, as well as researchers, as it makes a novel contribution to decision-making in the context of high reliability organizations.

About the author Leonie Looser is a senior manager in the operations department of a large German airline and has been teaching leadership on a MBA programme for several years. She wrote her dissertation at the Chair of Human Resources and Leadership at Chemnitz University of Technology.