Abstract Prior studies on crisis management often highlight the adaptiveness of generalist leaders, whose diverse functional experiences allow for flexible and innovative responses. However, we propose that in situations where crises lead to abrupt shifts in dominant institutional pressures, leaders with specialized functional backgrounds potentially exhibit greater adaptiveness with their narrower cognitive focus and decisive implementation of primary institutional requirements. Using data from the COVID‐19 outbreak in early 2020, we show that specialist municipal leaders in the Chinese government implemented social distancing policies more rigorously than their generalist counterparts when the dominant institutional demand shifted suddenly from economic development to public health protection. This relationship between functional specialization and strict policy implementation diminished when leaders possessed prior experience in crisis management or local communities, but was amplified when they held formal positions on provincial‐level decision‐making committees. Our study contributes to the crisis management literature by suggesting the adaptive potential of functionally specialized leaders during crises, underscoring the strength of their concentrated cognitive processing in navigating sudden institutional changes.
Guo et al. (Fri,) studied this question.