CEO Decision Making under Crisis: An Agency Theory Perspective

Abstract

Organisational resilience has gained increasing attention in recent years. This paper focuses on information systems resilience, which is an aspect of organisational resilience. Given the potentially devastating implications of disruptions to organisations, understanding the dynamics of the successful adaption of IS within organisations indicates an important avenue for future research. In this paper, we adopt Agency Theory to develop a conceptual framework, focused on decision making and planning for IS resilience. Concourse theory and Q-methodology were used to develop a Q-sort questionnaire, which was refined through interviews with researchers and IS professionals. The resulting 37 statements were then sorted by eight CEOs of Small Medium Enterprises (SME). Q-sort methodology identified three types of decision makers from the data, each representing distinct collective perspectives. These types are described and discussed, along with implications of findings as well as suggestions for future research.