Crisis Management in Covid-19 : A study in decision-making process of a crisis management team

Abstract: Background: Covid -19 pandemic affects how organizations and people operate. This crisisdiffers from previous ones due to its radical change. Organizations are threatened and strugglingto cope with the pandemic and making right decisions. This has put more attention on managementteam to address the issue at hand. This thesis explores how individuals experience crisis andmanaging it by decisions. Problem: Insufficient literature on how to make appropriate decisions in management team tocope with Covid-19 crisis. Purpose: This thesis purpose is to explore how crisis management team experience and cope withdecisions in the context of Covid-19. How individuals in a team overcome obstacles and makeappropriate decisions. Risks, uncertainty, stress, and time are previously known challenges formanagement teams. We aim to explore how these aspects affect the decision-making process. Research Question: How does crisis management team cope with Covid pandemic throughdecision-making? Method: This thesis has a qualitative research design and method of semi-structured interviewscarried out in a virtual environment due to Covid-19. Six informants have contributed to theempirical study. The empirical findings are presented in chapter 4 and analyzed by themes. Chapter5 provides discussion on the theoretical background and thesis findings, and finally conclusion inchapter 6. Conclusion: Crisis management encounters challenges with appropriate decisions for coping withCovid-19. However, our findings suggest that risk, ambiguity, and time factors are not majorchallenge and contradict this. This is due to the process of having an established crisis and makingdecisions collectively on all stages of a crisis. The most important stage of a crisis is the pre-stagewhere information is limited and guides the outcome of the whole process.