ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicInclusive Leadership in Multicultural Teams: Innovations, Challenges and SolutionsView all 8 articles
Inclusive Leadership and Financial–Marketing Decision-Making in Crises: Gender Diversity and Brand Resilience
Provisionally accepted
- 1Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
- 2Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- 3King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia
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This paper explores how the gender and diversity of leadership, as well as institutional context, influence crisis strategies and brand equity resilience across the UK and Saudi Arabia. The study has used upper echelons and role congruity theories, a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design integrated survey data from 298 firms with interviews from 32 executives. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that female leadership and financial austerity were found to be positive drivers of marketing investment and empathetic communication which mediated the indirect relationship between these two factors and brand equity resilience. Gender-diverse leadership teams exhibited higher brand resilience than did single-gender teams and the institutional context moderated these relationships with the UK showing sharper gender differences rather than Saudi Arabia. Qualitative findings shed light on how gendered communication and context-specific norms influence decision-making in crises. The results highlight that it is marketing and stakeholder communication to maintain activity, not austerity, that will protect brand equity. Organisations should promote a gender-balanced leadership, and empathetic communication to enhance the resilience of businesses in economic recessions.
Keywords: Brand equity resilience, Crisis leadership, gender diversity, Institutional context, Marketing investment
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Javeed, Khan, Alomair and Al Naim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Muhammad Yar Khan
Abdulrahman Alomair
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