Fail or thrive? : how to remain resilient when leadership transitions in startups turn into crisis
Authors: ['Lill, Damian Benedikt Novoa']
Year: 2025
Methodology
- Sample: Not explicitly stated in abstract (Qualitative interviews with startup leaders)
- Design: qualitative
- Data: Interviews with startup leaders, Resilience perspective framework
Factors Extracted (6)
Role Redundancy [moderate] — Qualitative identification as a proactive strategy
Stakeholder Engagement [moderate] — Qualitative identification as a mitigation strategy
Cultural Evolution/Adaptability [moderate] — Qualitative identification as a long-term adaptation factor
Managerial Alignment [moderate] — Identified as a risk factor (misalignment leads to crisis)
Resilience Feedback Loops [moderate] — Process-oriented approach for converting crisis to growth
Cognitive and Behavioural Factors [moderate] — Internal organizational responses to leadership departure
Key Findings
- Leadership departures in startups frequently trigger managerial misalignment, operational inefficiencies, and psychological upheavals within teams.
- Proactive strategies such as role redundancy and stakeholder engagement are critical in mitigating the immediate shocks of leadership transitions.
- Transitions can be converted from crises into opportunities for strategic renewal and growth through a process-oriented resilience approach.
Limitations
- Small sample size typical of qualitative interview-based master's theses.
- Focus is limited to the specific context of leadership departures rather than general startup success.
- The study relies on self-reported data from startup leaders, which may be subject to recall bias or social desirability bias.
Extracted by lib/ingest/literature_review.py via gemini-flash