The Expressed Values of Business Leaders in Decision-Making during Crisis

This paper constructs a framework of values for business leaders during crises. Using web content analysis of interviews on various media platforms of 11 entrepreneurs from the food service industry in the Philippines, the research analyzes the expressed values of these leaders, which led them to continue their businesses amidst the crisis of the pandemic. This paper provides a baseline framework on these critical values, which could help current and future business leaders in their decision-making when faced with challenging situations. The results show that leaders’ values affect the way they make decisions for their enterprise, and these values relate to the person of the leader, the operational and relational aspects of the enterprise, and the whole of industry and society. At the core of the framework of the entrepreneurial values in decision-making is the person of leader, where the leader's values on optimism, future orientation, mindfulness, resilience or perseverance are key. The leader needs values that help make decisions to sustain business operations, including innovativeness, culture of learning, and agility. The leader also expresses and cultivates values, which are healthy in terms of relationships in and out of the enterprise. A genuine concern (or the Filipino term "malasakit") towards employees, customers, and the community brings a powerful push for the leader to make his or her decision in continuing business amidst crises. Lastly, the leader's values towards the whole business ecosystem plays an important role, given that the crisis hit the whole industry and beyond. This is the reason why the leader's cooperation with key partners and even with its competitors takes a higher ground because the concern is for the whole industry to make it out of the crisis.