The role of strategic flexibility in enhancing crisis management in the commercial banking sector during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

It is important that strategic management ensure programs flexibility and continuous assessment to deal with the changes in strategies when dealing with other crises (Taymouri, Eslami, Fadaei, Delfan, & Ghasemi, 2014). Empirical findings are still lacking, specifically in the strategic flexibility-crisis management relationship (Yawson, 2020). The primary aim of this study is to examine crisis management among the commercial banks, during the COVID-19 pandemic and to conduct an empirical examination of the relationship between strategic flexibility and crisis management. The study data was gathered using a questionnaire survey, which was distributed to 242 Jordanian commercial bank branches managers. Out of the total (242) distributed questionnaire copies, 163 were returned and considered valid for analysis. Accordingly, data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Version 22 and the findings indicated that strategic flexibility significantly affected crisis management dimensions, namely prior to the crisis stage/crisis plans and during the crisis stage/crisis response. The statistical results supported statistically significant differences between each pair in light of experience level and education level of managers, in a manner that differences favored the highest experience category of over 10 years and the highest category of education of Ph.D. On the basis of the results, it is recommended that Jordanian commercial banks focus on strategic flexibility when planning their strategies in order to mitigate influences on crisis management