Culture in Crisis! Exploring how employees make sense of corporate culture during economic crisis. A study of a city hotel business in Thessaloniki, Greece
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the concept of corporate culture and leadership at a hotel in a crisis environment. In particular, we ask to what extent this corporate culture is challenged by the leadership during a crisis situation. The study was conducted in a city hotel in Thessaloniki, Greece. The financial crisis had and continues to have a great impact in the Eurozone. The crisis made its most aggressive appearance in Greece during 2009 and is still going strong. Based upon literature that supports the connection of corporate culture, leadership and commitment, management is vital during crisis. Through loosely structured interviews we investigated to what extent this corporate culture exists in a hotel in Greece and how the specific form of leadership of the management is influencing corporate culture. The study made in Thessaloniki is qualitative and has an interpretive character. The findings of this study suggest that the corporate culture is affected by the leadership style, threatened during crisis but at the same time its employees seem to connect and get a family kind of atmosphere. Furthermore, our findings could add to the existing literature regarding corporate culture and leadership. Since we investigate a hotel that strives to survive during crisis with an ambiguous leadership style and its direct implications to the culture of the company, we hope that our study could be used as a base for further research into the three fields mentioned
