Higher education institutions face persistent crises requiring adaptive, communicative leadership. This mixed-methods study examines how middle-level academic administrators (i.e., departmental heads, chairs, school directors, and unit administrators) manage crises, communicate resilience, and sustain engagement. Drawing on Hirschman’s Exit–Voice–Loyalty (EVL) framework and Buzzanell’s Communication Theory of Resilience (CTR), the study analyzed responses from participants across Arkansas public 4-year universities. Findings show that crisis management constitutes a normative rather than exceptional dimension of contemporary academic leadership. Respondents indicated strong adoption of CTR processes (i.e., crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, maintaining networks, and legitimizing negative emotions while foregrounding productive action), alongside significant relationships among EVL variables, indicating that leadership decisions during crises are negotiated rather than binary. Qualitative themes revealed four resilience strategies: strategic unit advocacy (persistent yet often unreciprocated upward communication), strategic emotional labor (mediating institutional stress and faculty morale), personal resilience and caregiving (balancing empathy and endurance), and leveraging external networks (using peer alliances when vertical trust fails).
Slagle et al. (Thu,) studied this question.