Difficult Times, Difficult Decisions: Examining the Impact of Perceived Crisis Response Strategies During COVID-19.

Crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, require rapid action to be taken by leaders, despite minimal understanding of the impact of implemented crisis management policies and procedures in organizations. This study's purpose was to establish a greater understanding of which perceived crisis response strategies were the most beneficial or detrimental to relevant perceptions and outcomes during the recent COVID-19 crisis. Using a time-lagged study design and a sample of 454 healthcare employees, latent profile analysis was used to identify strategy profiles used by organizations based on several policy/procedure categories (i.e., human-resource supportive, human-resource disadvantaging, behavioral/interactional human safety and protection-focused, and environmental and structural safety supports-focused policies and procedures). Results indicated that four perceived crisis response strategies were employed: (1) human resource-disadvantaging, (2) maximizing, (3) safety and human resource-supportive, and (4) inactive. Perceived crisis response strategy was linked to several employee well-being (e.g., work stress) and behavioral (e.g., safety behavior) outcomes via proximal perceptions (i.e., perceived organizational support, ethical leadership, and safety climate). Proximal perceptions were the most positive for employees within organizations that enacted safety and human resource-supportive policies and procedures or that utilized a maximizing approach by implementing a wide array of crisis response policies and procedures. This paper contributes to the literature by providing crucial information needed to reduce organizational decision-making time in the event of future crises.

When Does Safety Climate Help? A Multilevel Study of COVID-19 Risky Decision Making and Safety Performance in the Context of Business Reopening.

Businesses are gradually reopening as lockdown measures for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are being relieved in many places across the globe. It is challenging but imperative for businesses to manage the risk of infection in the workplace and reopen safely. Drawing on risky decision-making theory and the job demands-resource model of workplace safety, we examined the influences of employees' COVID-19 risk perception on their safety performance at work. On the one hand, COVID-19 risk perception motivates employees to perform safely; on the other hand, COVID-19 risk perception could also undermine safety performance through triggering anxiety. In an effort to find ways that alleviate the negative implications of risk perception, we also tested a cross-level interaction model where the risk perception-anxiety relation is weakened with a favorable team safety climate as well as low abusive supervision. Our data were collected from car dealership employees located in China in March 2020, when businesses just started to reopen in locations where these data were collected. Results showed that COVID-19 risk perception was positively related to anxiety, which in turn undermined safety performance. This negative effect canceled out the direct positive effects of COVID-19 risk perception on safety performance. In addition, cross-level interaction results showed that the buffering effect of team safety climate on the risk perception-anxiety relation was diminished with an abusive supervisor. Our findings provide valuable and timely implications on risk management and workplace safety during a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.