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The primary responsibilities of a team leader are often cited as setting direction, communicating, motivating, inspiring, and challenging the status quo (Black, 2016). However, leaders may also be responsible for other tasks, such as problem-solving and decision-making (McCauley, 2020). Managing in difficult situations and extreme contexts presents unique and specific challenges that require different additional skills and approaches (Bouty, 2012). In this article, we will explore, in Iraq, the particular difficulties that leaders face when leading diverse teams and operating in an extreme context. Moreover, we will discuss how successful leadership in extreme contexts requires a combination of skills, including but not limited to, strategic thinking, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and effective communication (Buchanan, 2019).

The diversity of Iraq’s population has been both a source of strength and a source of conflict over the years (de Hoop Scheffer, 2006). Local and global efforts to promote dialogue and mutual recognition continue to be essential these days, as the Iraqis have been experiencing serious conflicts for many years. This has also been affecting the leadership style in the public and private sectors, with consequences affecting the economic, social, and individual development in the country (Hällgren, 2018). Leading such diverse teams in Iraq is one of the most difficult duties in the realm of management. Those teams still face the everyday challenge of completing tasks, meeting objectives, and tracking progress while always preserving a safe working environment, at all times, especially during extreme events and in extreme contexts. This can only confirm that the duty of carrying out assigned tasks falls on both leaders and team members. The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory suggests that leaders and employees, in their groups (referred to as members) can achieve better performance by cultivating high-quality relationships among themselves. A high-quality relationship, in a team, is characterized by trust, mutual recognition, and loyalty (Liden and Maslyn, 1998), and members who engage in high-quality exchanges perceive their leaders as more “ethical, authentic, and less abusive and undermining” (Erdogan & Bauer, 2015). High LMX (H-LMX) members demonstrate even more desirable behaviors at work. In addition, they tend to have higher levels of performance ratings, given that those ratings are obtained from supervisors within their large scope of responsibilities. Although The relationship between LMX and task-oriented behaviors is well established (Dulebohn, 2012), however, it has not been studied in extreme contexts like Iraq.

Extreme events raise substantial questions regarding the readiness of leaders to be prepared to handle, manage, or react to the repercussions of extreme events (Fernandez, Giordano, Loufrani, 2017). We had the opportunity to have a deep understanding of the reality of management in Wartime in Iraq using a qualitative research design.

The 16 diverse ethnic groups interviewees revealed the difficult situations they had faced with a lack of support from their supervisors even during terrorist attacks; they also highlighted the key impact of leaders on their teams to achieve successful operations and performance despite the dramatic context of Iraq. The political issues and wartime have made it even more difficult to take care of the level of calm and equilibrium essentially needed to maintain management effectiveness in Iraq.

The challenges in wartime include effective and reliable communications in addition to the leader’s actions within the scope of ethical responsibilities. It is obvious in management that responsible leaders can assist teams, and organizations and help them develop professionally, be technically skilled, enhance emotional intelligence, and foster resilience to be able to address extreme events effectively.

This article provides a practical overview of H-LMX in the context of diverse teams operating within an extreme context like Iraq. In addition, we have reviewed topics related to the delegation of authority from organization headquarters, away from what is happening on the ground, to leaders managing the business in an extreme context, from the top management well supported by advisors to lonely leaders navigating extreme events. Finally, we conclude the article by identifying and summarizing key themes and questions for future research.

Iraqi context and literature review

Managing in Iraq nowadays

At present, Iraq faces an extreme situation characterized by an unemployment crisis, import chaos, and a dilapidated rentier economy with mainly oil revenue (UN report, 2022). Iraq’s economy depends primarily on oil which accounts for 96% of the federal budget’s real value. Nevertheless, as stated in a 2022 World Bank report, Iraq’s oil revenues can no longer cover its operating expenses and large percentages of the population live under the poverty line. Today, these economic pressures have become a time bomb in wartime (Bourgeois, 2002, Bouty, 2012, Buchanan, 2019). The extreme wartime management situation dates back to 2014, with the consequences still affecting everyday life to this day.

Iraq is also a country with a diverse population that includes Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac, and Turkish groups. Iraqi Arabs constitute the largest group in Iraq, while Iraqi Kurds are the largest Indo-European ethnic group and the largest ethnic minority. The percentages of different ethnoreligious groups residing in Iraq vary from source to source as the most recent Iraqi census was conducted over 35 years ago. Iraq is a suitable context for our research.

Leading a team in an extreme context with such a wide range of ethnoreligious diversity is undoubtedly a significant challenge, and ensuring inclusion within the team can be hard. Iraq is a country bordered by conflictive relationships with neighbors: Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. Iraq has always been the home to diverse ethnic groups including Iraqi Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, and other minorities. It is a country with a rich and diverse cultural heritage, with a population that has been living in crises, wars, and extreme events all over the years in history.

The majority of Iraqis are Muslims, with Shiites (Shia Muslims) representing the majority at around 60-65% of the population, and Sunni Muslims making up around 30-35%. Other minor religious groups include, but are not limited to, Christians and Yazidis mainly. Ethnically, the population of Iraq is also diverse, with Arabs being around 70-80% of the population, however, the Iraqi Kurds, being the second ethnic majority, making up to 15-20% of the Iraqi population, and are mainly located in the north of Iraq. The Kurds, around 30 million, are split into 5 different countries, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Armenia; majorly in Turkey.

Leader-Member Exchange

The study of the High Leader-Member Exchange (H-LMX) seeks to determine whether adherence to best practices can ensure superior organizational performance. However, there are opinions that contingency theory remains dominant and that the fit between management and their environment is always important (Wood, 2003). The term “High-quality LMX” refers to positive and healthy relationships between managers and employees, characterized by trust, a shared sense of purpose, the leader’s concern for members, and a desire to see them thrive, as described by researchers in this article. The Leader-Member Exchange model offers a theoretical framework for understanding how leadership is comprised of many reciprocal relationships between the leader and their subordinates. The strength of each relationship is typically assessed using variables such as competence, trust, respect, support, and loyalty. The extreme context in Iraq may have a significant impact on these variables.

Extreme Context

Extreme Context becomes an environment “where one or more extreme events are occurring or are likely to occur that may exceed the organization’s capacity to prevent and result in an extensive and intolerable magnitude of physical, psychological, or material consequences to— or in close physical or psychosocial proximity to— organization members” (Hannah, 2009, p. 898). An Extreme Context refers to an environment where organizations, requiring significant sensing, seizing, and transformation capabilities within their teams, are more likely to experience high risk and potential failure. Extreme Context can also be categorized as: Risky (Potential; Related), Emergency (Actual; Related), Disrupted (Actual; Unrelated), or Surprising (Potential; Unrelated) (Hallgren & Bushunan, 2018). There are factors present in extreme contexts that are not present in ordinary contexts. These factors can be described in five dimensions: (a) location and time, (b) magnitude of potential consequences, (c) probability of those consequences occurring, (d) physical or psychosocial proximity to danger, and (e) form of threat (Hannah et al., 2009).

Responsibilities in the Iraqi Context

In today’s world, responsibility is a crucial element for any organization. Leaders often bear the responsibility of delegating tasks. However, as it is not always possible for a leader to take on all the responsibilities of the team members, it is essential, especially in the context of Iraq’s unsafe environment, for leaders to identify the team members best suited for each duty and delegate tasks accordingly. In designing and implementing the delegation process, leaders should balance both competence and ethics. By “doing the right thing” (Vlachos, 2013), leaders can, as part of their responsibilities, foster a positive working environment and benefit society at both the micro and macro levels. The challenge is that many responsibilities are both objective and subjective: objective such as efficiency and cost and subjective from ethical perspectives. Many responsibilities in various fields and contexts involve both objective and subjective aspects. For example, in business, managers may have objective responsibilities related to maximizing efficiency and reducing costs, but also subjective responsibilities related to ethical considerations, such as treating employees fairly and avoiding breaking the business code of ethics. It can be challenging to balance these objective and subjective responsibilities, as they may sometimes come into conflict with each other. A leader may have to make a decision that increases efficiency but may be unethical or harm employees in some way. In these situations, it’s important to consider all aspects of the situation and make a well-informed decision that considers both the objective and subjective responsibilities involved. This can require careful thought, consultation with others, and a willingness to prioritize ethical considerations even when it may not be the most efficient or cost-effective option. Those responsibilities stem from both economic considerations and personal values and beliefs but can be difficult to enforce and easy to neglect (Rupp, 2006), especially in extreme contexts. The result is that “when the costs are added up, the social balance sheet contains enormous debts to society” (Becchetti, 2007: 15). It can be difficult to discern whether executive leaders’ opportunistic or efficient actions are deliberately intended to motivate employees in an extreme context or are driven by other factors. Scandals involving unethical behavior, ranging from corruption to abuse, have been extensively covered in the news in recent years in Iraq. Regardless, it shows that unethical behavior is a serious problem for organizations and society. In an extreme context where the actions of managers and employees can have significant consequences for others, there is a pressing need to enhance ethical standards and mitigate unethical behavior. Such unethical conduct may jeopardize the safety of those who rely on managers to safeguard their well-being; while investors are mainly concerned with the company’s bottom line, and with the firm’s long-term viability. By endorsing economic perspective and ethics in a company’s operations, leaders and employees are creating a friendly environment for long-term commitment and corporate success (Greenwood, 2013). Researchers try to explain and investigate the contexts in which teams are being formed and highly developed, together with their delegation goals that contribute to their growth and success (Gond, 2011). Understanding the “context” is a vital dynamic when factoring any research; what is not accepted in ordinary situations might be accepted in an extreme event; what can be established in extreme contexts may not be practiced in ordinary contexts, and vice versa. The impact of the leadership style in different contexts becomes critical for organizations, employees, customers, and citizens; resulting in high expectations on those in leadership positions. Nevertheless, the public expects those teams to operate and perform successfully irrespective of the contexts (ordinary and extreme events). Such expectations produce more pressure on leaders and push them to feel more responsible. The literature has mostly discussed leader-member exchange but not on a high level of LMX in extreme contexts, particularly for organizations.

Leadership in Extreme Context

When an extreme event occurs, it creates an immediate need for a special kind of leader. Effective leaders are required to consider a multitude of factors, ranging from local to global, and acknowledge the diverse cultural backgrounds present within their teams while fulfilling their direct responsibilities and maintaining a business-oriented mindset. Organizations operating in extreme contexts are subject to extreme events; therefore, team adaptability is an essential capability within the team to support leaders achieve their goals. A leader may naturally gravitate towards either the transactional or transformational or ethical leadership theories in their style and way of managing team members. Those who aspire to leadership in an extreme context may develop an understanding of the combination rather than the difference between the three and recognize how they can apply the appropriate style based on Iraq’s extreme context.

Transactional, transformational, and ethical leadership are effective in achieving intended results in Iraq in an extreme context. Transactional leaders prioritize organizational performance and adopt a typical leader-member exchange perspective. These leaders are not looking much toward innovating for the future but rather maximizing productivity in the present (Max Weber, 1947). They focus on making the day-to-day business of an organization flow smoothly. Transformational leaders focus on organizational change and employee development from a high leader-member exchange perspective. These leaders devote more time to developing a strategy for the future of their team or organization, and then motivating and inspiring employees to buy into that vision (Bernard M. Bass, 1985). This leadership is most effective in organizations or teams that need a leader to guide them toward positive change. Ethical leaders include maximizing aggregate well-being and minimizing aggregate pain, goals that are helped by pursuing efficiency in decision-making, reaching moral decisions without regard for self-interest, and avoiding tribal behavior (such as ethnic or in-group favoritism) in the Iraqi extreme context. The most effective leaders recognize when and how to apply the elements of the three leadership theories. Simultaneously, leadership is what we define as the model that combines all the above taking into consideration the diverse aspects in the “team” and in the “context”, supported majorly by LMX theory (Dansereau et al., 1975).

Leadership and LMX Theory

Leadership theories have evolved and developed, and their relevance was often analyzed based on the context in which leadership was applied. Leadership has been directed to roles that vary from simple management-oriented portfolios to the management of extreme cases, as one that does not fit all heads. This role means that the working environment, situations, contexts, culture, new regulations, information overload, organizational complexities, and psycho-socio developments remarkably impact the leadership concept, thereby making it commensurate to the changing organizational dynamics. It was also determined that a manager does not become a leader just by featuring the possession of some combination of traits (Samad, 2012). Nevertheless, the commitment and competence of the followers and the relationship behavior required by the followers’ functions and objectives play an important role in evaluating performance and success (Ryan & Tipu, 2013). Without including subordinates, the autocratic leader makes decisions; a laissez-faire leader lets subordinates make their own decision and hence takes no real leadership role other than having the title; on the other hand, democratic leaders seek advice from their subordinates and then take decisions (Khan et al., 2016).

LMX focuses on the relationship that develops between managers and members of their teams (Graen et al., 1982), LMX theory states all relationships between managers and subordinates undergo three stages: role-taking, role-making, and routinization. It is also based on the concept of a “developed” or “negotiated” role, and that one’s role will be redefined and developed with time, resulting in varied leader-member exchanges. Reinforcing this differentiation is the time limitation leaders often face on site. Relationships between team members and their leader differ due to many factors. Because of time pressures, the leader develops a close relationship with only a few key subordinates (Graen, 1976). As with the rest of the workgroup, the leader will rely mainly on formal authority, rules, and policies to ensure adequate performance.

High Leader-Member Exchange is a new theory that focuses on the context of a higher level of performance and more flexibility in the mindset. Leaders are responsible for motivating their teams. Lack of motivation can lead to poor productivity and inability to achieve department and organizational goals. Negativity, lack of performance, and other organizational factors lead to poor team morale. Leaders are often challenged to increase efficiency and morale, especially during periods when teams are unable to reach goals in the case of extreme contexts. These leadership skills have been defined in economic orientation with transactional and transformational sensitivity and awareness, strong communication, and strategic thinking.

Figure 1

LMX theory approach

LMX theory approach

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Leaders should know how to manage responsibilities in diverse extreme contexts by addressing differences in individuals’ backgrounds as well as promoting inclusivity in competence levels. This diversity will complicate the challenge for the leader and their team members, both of whom will need longer time to understand how to address any issue. The confusion might take the leaders a longer time to know how to better engage their teams. By the time the leader and their team reach a proper solution, the extreme event has already exhausted the organization. Hence, there is a dire need to manage extreme events before they occur. The organization has to take responsibility for developing adaptability and dynamic capabilities for their teams on a regular basis to manage when facing extreme events.

Research design and methodology

The researchers selected a qualitative methodology that could go beyond the surface of the leadership management rhetoric (Dey, 1993; Eikeland and Brogger, 2008).

Collecting and managing data in Iraq have been time-consuming and difficult because of the emotional context. Improving data collection and data management has been always an effective way to achieve better results, so there is a specific strategy for collecting, organizing, and managing data in extreme contexts. It needed to be a consistent and ongoing process that encompassed all aspects of diversity of leaders being able and available to answer to our interview process. We have selected interviewees from different ethnic groups 5arabic, Kurds and Armenians) and capable to generate data that elucidated the relationship between leaders and members and the business, and that revealed trends and overall performance in Iraq. We selected interviewees within a large group of leaders who were on this mindset of performance orientation and responsibilities. They have been chosen as well from a networking sampling perspective (Frank, 2005). Network sampling emerged as a set of methods for drawing statistically valid samples of hard-to-reach populations such as leaders located in Iraq and leading a team. The form of network sampling involved asks respondents about events affecting those in their personal and professional networks, in the situation of facing leadership perspective in such an extreme context of Iraq.

In order to do that, we first constructed an initial diagnosis of the leadership challenges in extreme contexts, based on interviews with sixteen leaders in Iraq, male and female, Muslims Shiites, Sunnis, Arabs, Christians and Kurds, juniors and seniors, located all around the country (Baghdad, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Basra). We tried to select leaders who embrace an emphasis on specific challenges in extreme contexts without either compassion or frustration. This diagnosis generated a broad description of the responsibilities of leaders based on semi-structured interviews in Iraq. All interviewees confirmed leading employees from different backgrounds, local and international. One of the interviewees stated that their team included 21 different nationalities over the years. And here comes the importance of managing diversity, as Acceptance and Inclusion have been the main approaches to dealing with diversity since employees used to go back to their roots, and take sides when conflict happens in extreme events. The semi-structured interviews conducted with 16 leaders, averaging two hours in length, were transcribed verbatim from tape recordings, yielding twelve pages of text. For all interviews, the researchers tried to review their notes for accuracy immediately after the interviews and before transcription. We focused more on seeking to identify topics rather than test relationships between variables impacting responsible leadership accountability (Saunders, et al., 2009). This was particularly useful as a first step towards further expanding our knowledge in extreme contexts. For our research purposes, the semi-structured interview method proved to be appropriate for explaining the characteristics of such a phenomenon.

Verbatim reports, age ranges, management levels, organizational tenure, and team size approach have been essential in defining our sample. We obtained interviews with some difficulty in overbooked agendas and considered the need to find fully comprehensible Arabic but for the Kurdish leaders with English speakers.

The researchers identified and interviewed leaders to gain a better understanding of the above-mentioned issues. They also searched for articles from public databases and NGO websites for additional information to corroborate, triangulate and validate interview results. Trustworthiness in interpretative research was ensured by using four criteria: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. To be able to understand and explain the influence of leadership on team performance in a High Leader-Member Exchange in extreme contexts, we decided to work on an explicative approach for teams in Iraq that have experienced extreme events. The contemporary phenomenon that will be researched is relevant to what is happening around us in the world, specifically in Iraq. Furthermore, conducting research in extreme contexts such as Iraq is challenging as it deals with stressful and potentially shocking experiences of suffering, injustice, good judgment, or poor judgment that can create guilt feelings and exhaustion in the researcher (Morse & Field, 1995; Dickson-Swift et al., 2007). Even studying secondary traumatic accounts in documents without direct contact with those who had experienced the traumas, can result in “sleeping disorders, emotional changes, and a need for social support” (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007). Despite all those challenges, the researchers need to maintain objectivity and use their experiences as strengths, for their analysis would differ from other scholars who had different life experiences and backgrounds.

The procedures that were used to collect data are deep and casual interviews. The interviews were either recorded or noted, then analyzed by identifying the key variables. The explicative approach led us to define key variables, explain the relationship between them, and the development of theoretical perspectives. These sources include face-to-face interviews with key informants; online interviews with other informants; agency records (including local statistical information); project documents and memoranda; illustrative materials (e.g., newsletters and other publications that form part of an organization’s history).

Analyzing the topic that is developed during the research progress, the data revealed speaks for itself and directs the research. Sixteen interviews were conducted with different leaders operating in extreme contexts and from different backgrounds and sectors. The interviews were very rich in emotions, content, controversy, and diversity. During the interviews, depth in the narrative was observed throughout the whole discussion with the interviewees. The conversation was mainly centered around their main achievements and heroic persona. Within this narrative, the leaders mostly highlighted how their personal experiences and actions were key contributions that influenced the flow of both external and internal events. Meanwhile, many leaders also expressed a variety of emotions as they discussed extreme events and their impact on them. For example, some leaders portrayed emotions of guilt through their body language as they deliberated events where they made “bad” judgments. Such body language included but was not limited to shedding tears, shivering, varying of the vocal tone, and changing facial expressions. As a result, the interviews could be considered a form of duality, with feelings of pride and gratification versus feelings of guilt and shame. In order to understand an extreme context, it is essential to appreciate and recognize the gap with a normal context; an effective comparison and analogy of the degree of ambiguity and uncertainty in wartime versus peacetime, savagery versus civilization, managing in extreme contexts versus managing in stable peaceful contexts, violence versus humanity. This is the context that this research has been navigating through, and the interviewees were chosen wisely. Below you can find the list of the sixteen leaders who were interviewed:

Table 1

Respondents and experts involved in the research

Respondents and experts involved in the research

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Iraq is a fragile state deeply traumatized and riven by thirty years of war, occupation, and ethnic or sectarian conflict (Shia-Sunni, Arab-Kurd, or intra-Shia). Despite extreme violence still on the run, our work is dedicated to understanding and explaining how leaders experience extreme contexts in their management actions; how key players react to extreme events; how the different elements are connected to one another in terms of applied leadership style and to the leader-member exchange perspective, among individuals and in the organization. In brief, how extreme contexts impact the main management logic (El Dirani, 2015).

We have identified three main logics in our theoretical perspective depending on styles of leadership:

To develop teamwork spirit and to maintain everyday leader-member exchange perspective facing extreme (and more than extreme sometimes) actions in a transactional leadership style,

  • to boost motivation for all the leaders and diverse members and to empower people at work in a transformational leadership style,

  • to deal with multiple responsibilities in Iraq within an ethical leadership style.

Based on those interviews, a quick observation worth mentioning here is that the majority have used an interpretivist approach to the event and have applied a more pragmatic and realistic mindset. To analyze the results of the interviews, a comprehensive approach was conducted to highlight the different three logics that are initially categorized to explain how they are interrelated to reveal the relevant theoretical perspective through the research progress.

Results and discussion

Teams are at the center of the current work in leader-members exchange, and teams play an important role in any meaningful mission. A few quotes from the concerned interviewees are listed below: “Nothing will work unless you do.” verbatim n°1; “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” verbatim n°2 “It will work” is a way of saying “It will happen” or “It is possible”. verbatim n°3 “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” verbatim n°4; People in a certain context with a defined problem, challenge, or mission will contribute to identifying the best logic.

“One of the senior leaders once told me: “Spend 50% of your time on internal politics”, within the organization, “and the other 50% on your clients and business!”... I had never understood that until I started reflecting on my life experience, lately.” (R16, 2022). He joined an organization with lots of assumptions that he never tested and without understanding what to expect. There is a big difference between the actual culture of the organization and what the organization claims on its website or in its leader-members speeches. “My mission in life has been always to empower others and change their lives for the better”; reading this quote deeply can help us understand what kind of challenges the interviewee had faced throughout their career, positively and negatively. Many leaders do not appreciate this mission but fight it. In organizations, if the individual mission is not fully aligned with the actual organizational mission, conflicts start to pop up which affects the individual and the team’s performance. To maintain successful performance in such context, it will require a wide spectrum of skills that strengthen resilience and innovation. And here, one can argue the connection with resilience. Conditional organizational support might lead to weak resilience and to individual breakdown; “I always thought that delivering a good job is what matters, after all, that was only in my head! while few seniors disagreed with that. All what matters to them was their personal benefits and circle of power and influence, in other words, their kingdom.” “This situation gave me extremely hard time to the extent that I tried to leave the company few times, the internal politics between different top management leaders just affected my whole life in a bad way personally and professionally”, (R16, 2022).

Table 2

Leader-member exchange logics Verbatim

Leader-member exchange logics Verbatim

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One can connect how at certain times, the leader’s resilience got weakened because of the lack of organizational support.

The R16’s team experienced a different example of leadership: “We made a great team. I did my best to coach them, to empower them in a professional ethical way.”

Table 3

Facing extreme actions logics’ Verbatim

Facing extreme actions logics’ Verbatim

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Facing Extreme Actions

“Receiving a call from terrorists asking for a ransom put the team in a position to feel responsible for the life of others, our reaction to such savagery can be a savior or fatal! We never responded to such demands, but could not sleep until the kidnapped was released”. The interviewee stated that they were not sure of their reaction, but all that mattered to them was their individual values, not to encourage bad guys to do more bad things.

On the other side, it seems that the majority of the interviewees expressed their rejection to the term “resilience”; they refused to be categorized as resilient leaders or resilient teams. Most interviewees did not want to be described as “resilient” because they believed that the word is equated with “survival”, or “acceptance” of the extreme event implications. The reaction portrayed by the interviewees contradicts previous research, which states the capability to adapt to new risk environments (Starr et al. 2003). Instead, the majority preferred and asked to be categorized as “creative leaders”, “innovative leaders”, “creative teams”, and “innovative teams”. Most likely, this reaction is due to the ‘will’ and ‘mindset’ that leaders and teams have developed in extreme contexts, and one could argue that resilience is a preset characteristic that one has before an extreme event occurs. Therefore, it may be part of the “ordinary capabilities”.

“I tried my best to take this load and prevent their (supervisors) irresponsible behavior from affecting negatively my team members’ spirit and the business performance”, (R16, 2022). Here one can observe how this leader tried to behave in a different way than their senior leaders and strengthen the team’s spirit by cutting the negative influence from the top management, but this was never easy as stated by the interviewee how this affected his whole life.

“At points, I hated them”, a tough statement by the leader that reflects the impact of such supervisors’ behavior on them, on the team, and on the business.

Boosting Dynamic Capabilities in Iraq

The majority of the interviewees conveyed their alignment on the need of managing diversity. This agrees with what is mentioned in the literature. The interviewees’ reaction was based on the team’s enhanced performance during extreme contexts as a result of a strong inclusion process integrating a diverse workforce. A considerable portion of the organization’s success achievements, according to interviewees, was due to sensing, seizing, and transforming the team. Hence, ‘empowerment’ could become ordinary in organizational processes in extreme contexts.

“I only focused on my team and my client and how to deliver what we promise as an organization (‘Customer Centricity’ was my slogan)”, (R10, 2021) Sensing was obtained by being close to their client and understanding what is happening around them to collect reliable data that helped the leader to align with their team and identify the best resources to complete the job professionally and ethically. “Having a competent team helped a lot”, (R7, 2021) delegating and giving leadership responsibilities to the team members assisted in bringing innovative solutions that helped the team to transform in order to maintain high performance.

The majority of the interviewees stressed the importance of psychological empowerment (self-empowerment and empowerment of others). This agrees with the literature, the interview results compliment what is written in the Literature and highlight that psychological empowerment is key and without it, organizations can fail in extreme contexts (Calves, 2009). However, respondents were not able to detect the source of this empowerment and whether it can be maintained or developed in extreme contexts. The confusion might be due to the fact that these interviewees either were unconscious of the encouraging and optimistic environment or already exhibit an attitude of confidence and optimism themselves. This overall attitude would allow both self-empowerment as well as the empowerment of others

Table 4

Resilience challenges Verbatim

Resilience challenges Verbatim

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“I was dropping my little kid on his first day in school, and without sharing the unacceptable behavior from supervisors, they just destroyed one of the best moments a father can ever feel in his life!! This is one story of many! Had I allowed this to impact the team and business performance? No!” The R12 interviewee highlighted the importance of psychological self-empowerment to balance what he was experiencing in his career and thinking about how work could affect one’s personal life; To overcome such incidents personal psychological empowerment would be the main contributor when one lacks objective professional support from top management. In parallel to the psychological support, faith plays a big role in their experience, “I even asked God and kept praying to protect me from such destructive behavior, their influence and manipulation more than the external factors in such country”.

Table 5

Psychological empowerment Verbatim

Psychological empowerment Verbatim

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Anxiety, worries, and concerns were always there, especially during certain setbacks, terrorism attacks, or kidnapping of individuals, asking for ransom, and bad judgments… but what was making them move forward is that their eyes were always on “success” despite the internal and external challenges”, psychological empowerment was their main tool to keep moving, in addition to their faith and positivity.

“I am still living consequences and repercussions of that experience psychologically socially emotionally parentally and practically…” Despite the professional success that R16 and their team achieved and still achieving, the impact of such an experience affected their life badly, but definitely, with time, made them stronger, wiser, and better people as they claim.

The R14 interviewee was dealing with his team in a different way, gathering the team and empowering them despite the failures, believing in them and pushing them to believe in themselves. This was publicly practiced throughout the years, and especially when the launch of the project failed; The interviewee was convinced that psychological empowerment makes the biggest difference in team performance on top of ordinary and dynamic capabilities.

During extreme events, things can go side-ways but the leaders confirm that such experiences develop the leaders in a strong and wise way, “extreme contexts change people for the better, it changed me to the better, despite the challenges and the big losses... it did change me forever”.

Table 6

Dynamic capabilities Verbatim

Dynamic capabilities Verbatim

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Responsibilities of leaders in high leader-member exchanges

Being a responsible leader in Iraq has never been easy. Working across Iraqi society/societies, and building bridges among communities that have experienced serious challenges and struggle over the years, those leaders, and through their professional roles, have recognized and appreciated the Iraqi extreme context difficulties.

In extreme Iraqi context, ethnic conflicts faced by interviewees were not only ethnic or religious differences themselves but over utmost economic and severe social issues. A R1 Kurd leader explained: “There are times when being more than poor presents us as Kurd people with challenges. As a Kurd leader, I always have to decline invitations from Arabic groups, much as I do not appreciate some gesture from them! In fact, it does make difficult for me to establish good relationships with other Iraqi ethnic groups, which I think is an important part of any business and management relationships especially in extreme context”. An R3 Arabic leader explained: “In wartime such as Iraq, I do harder and harder to negotiate with other Arabic from Iraq as a because I have less in common with them...Each time we ran into economic collapses we had, together, tried to turn to ethnic differences and it did not help us overcome the economic conflict. It may sound quite strange to do this, but it did not work and we have to deal with domestic migrations when we reached the breaking point”.

Table 7

Cultural challenges in Iraq Verbatim

Cultural challenges in Iraq Verbatim

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Fanaticism seems there in Iraq. The economic problems are in extreme context between ethnic groups and above all between rich Arabic people and poor groups such as Kurds. It is an intense economic conflict between those people who believe that the end justifies all the means and lead to utmost economic problems. Intense economic collapses were sources of maximum management problems for leaders and had led to develop acute tensions among ethnic groups with inequitable options (in terms for example of access to houses and not only tents, standards of living with water and electricity and some domestic migrations). Resentment are common and serve as an acute source of frustrations. Iraq might be in the process of becoming a failed state divided along its various regions, dominated by various different identity communities, on the other side, responsible leadership has to deal with this complex cultural context in Iraq. They have to be able to handle economic and social logic simultaneously, which involves frequently displaying seemingly contradictory traits in their behavior and decision-making. Thus, responsible leaders require strong cognitive, relational, ethical, and behavioral capacities to tailor their responses to a wide variety of different demands.

The majority of the interviewees voiced the importance of the relationship between the responsible leader and the team members, highlighting the importance of LMX Leadership, without explicitly mentioning it. They also highlighted the essential efforts to improve communication within teams, who come from different backgrounds. However, few of the interviewees were conscious about focusing on internal and external cultural differences in extreme contexts. These results complement the literature about the need for developing LMX Leaders for international companies, but also this need is even more essential in extreme contexts, especially with decision-making processes and time constraints (Story, 2011). It seems that cultural consciousness is not considered a priority for leaders during extreme events as their main objective is to “survive” in Iraq’s cultural context.

Leaders, who are based in advanced countries, might expect leaders and teams in extreme contexts to perform and achieve ‘top-down’ set targets, irrespective of the context.

The degree of “success” of those who were culturally sensitive in the course of leading was majorly higher than those who were not.

Responsible leadership in the specific context of Iraq requires creativity and global corporate citizenship behavior in a multiple-level stakeholder society. In a sense, globalization creates a 2-way situation where leaders may need to address the sensitivities of economic crisis, and at the same time address issues of liability to the team and local people in Iraq.

Responsible leaders need to clearly communicate to achieve global competitiveness through the effective leveraging of local staff’s knowledge and social capital.

The interviewees who are culturally sensitive and well-connected highlighted that their approach led to better communication and better results. It leads us to build our model of research integrating the responsibilities and the high LMX in an extreme context.

Transactional vs. transformational, ethical leadership is not a question of a good vs. bad, right vs. wrong approach to leadership in the Iraqi extreme context. While they are in fact different approaches to leadership to reach better performance and empowerment processes, the three options offer advantages and are important styles of leadership to understand and apply in types of management logics in extreme contexts. The organizational performance involves analyzing a leader-member exchange perspective’s performance against its objectives and goals. In other words, organizational performance comprises real results or outputs compared with intended outputs in Iraqi extreme context.

Figure 2

Integrative Research Model

Integrative Research Model

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Leadership has always been the main subject to be researched or evaluated when success or failure is involved. Initial results showed that the main contributor to success is resilience. Extreme context is a special context that clearly puts leaders in the spotlight and subjects them to stress. Extreme context definitely impacts the Human Resources logics and in different ways such as wages. The personal and professional growth opportunity for leaders to join an organization operating in extreme contexts would not be the only motivating factor without the high wages to encourage competent employees to join them.

Table 8

Creativity and Innovation logics in Iraq Verbatim

Creativity and Innovation logics in Iraq Verbatim

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“I have been in leadership positions for more than twenty-three years, starting from leading a small team to bigger ones, then small organizations to national, regional, international and even Global in certain areas. My leadership understanding has been developed throughout the years”, this is how it all started, the leader was trying to learn by himself, trying to find out what is right and what is wrong by observing. “I was looking for a role model, that I can learn from so that I can feel good about myself, and in the eyes of the top management, colleagues, subordinates, clients, and my family and friends.” Obviously, their development path had been always through their personal learning. The leading challenge encountered by participants was due to a compensation system that was with huge differences between the home country and Iraq. Compensation has been seen as a motivating factor in extreme context to provide high and inequitable living standards with local managers.

“The good salaries played a strong motive for us to continue working even during tough times” (verbatim Scott, 2022). Inconsistencies in policy based on home/host country combination are high in Iraq. The term wage policy refers usually to legislation or government action undertaken to regulate the level or structure of wages, or both, for the purpose of achieving specific objectives of social and economic policy. But in Iraq the situation involves a lot of difficulties of the government in relation to a national wage and salary system, legislation, and so on with hard challenges for the managers. The above sixteen interviews targeted different responsible leaders who have experienced extreme events during the course of their careers, and their responses to the questions assigned were divided into separate themes: high LMX and Psychological Empowerment. We have seen that high LMX have the opportunity and the obligation to drive growth in tandem with extreme social and environmental outcomes. This has been possible by redefining what it means to lead responsibly. A new generation is leading the way, focused on driving value while honoring values within our 16 interviewees. H-LMX leadership has become real when they have learned from and ultimately reflects those it serves in extreme context. Despite the clear priority leadership also represents the largest ‘capability gap’ for building great leaders has widened in every region in the world, especially in extreme context countries. The collapse of supervisory support, the need for creativity, resilience, and H-LMX leaders who are able to successfully navigate this new and frightening world of uncertainty within an Iraqi economic crisis. As Charles Handy said “We cannot wait for great leaders to emerge for they are in short supply. We must light our own fires in the darkness” and the interviewees tried to do so often in Iraq everyday management actions.

Table 9

Social Capital Verbatim

Social Capital Verbatim

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Conclusion

Primary responsibilities and a high leader-member exchange are not as simple as caring about employees (Whitener 2001), local people, suppliers, shareholders (Shen, 2016), and policymakers (Matten, 2009). All demand different things in the economic collapse of Iraq nowadays (Hallgren, 2018). Responsibilities and a high leader-member exchange help to link ethical challenges and performance to actions (Gond, 2001) on the part of three management logics (Farooq, 2014). In Iraq, where public trust in politicians is low and the economic recovery is often called into question, responsibilities and a high leader-member exchange have the challenge in management to bridge a gap between the conflictive perception and increased accountability to all stakeholders (Slack, 2014). There are logics and practical solutions that have emerged, responsibilities and a high leader-member exchange try to make decisions that are sustainable as well as ethical. Finding a balance in Iraq is more than difficult. Here are some of the soft skills and personality traits possessed by successful responsible leaders in the context of Iraq: honesty, long-term perspective, vision, competence, empathy, respect for others, and serving others especially employees within the scope of high LMX (Graen, 1995). This explanatory study attempted to discover and analyze many factors and conditions that could help us build the explanation for the case of responsibilities and many high leader-member exchange actions and management logics in Iraq. We expected that new findings would add a lot of value to the previous scientific work, especially through the empirical value added to be collected on wartime. Wartime is the mode of operation that occurs in Iraq when systems are under extreme conditions. Managers are querying alerts and looking at performance data in this collapsing economy with dynamic capabilities, resilience, and creativity. In management in Iraq, the Wartime organizational chart has to be different from the Peacetime organizational one (Denis, 2012). Some managers lead the emergency (Wartime) response and have been on the run of bossnapping, ransom, or corruption that affected all the organization. Roles and responsibilities, the chain of command, and the assignment of tasks in Wartime have been very specific in the Iraqi cultural context. We have tried to establish correlations between key variables (Leadership, extreme contexts, teams, trust, motivation, …) and understand how these correlations exist through multi-case study research and how they interact with the external world during extreme conditions in building an integrative research model. The present research attempted to settle the best responsibilities and a high leader-member exchange in extreme contexts and performant ways in business. Due to the explanatory nature of the study, qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted (Yin, 1994). The data provided reflected how transactional, transformational, and ethical leaders’ accountability have been perceived, interpreted, and legitimated by those involved. However, there are few limitations to this study. One limitation is the possibility of bias from the researcher when analyzing data from the interviewees due to the emotional content and their relation to some of the extreme events the interviewees referred. Moreover, another limitation is the partial bias of interviewees as they portray the events from their own perspective, highlighting achievements and withholding failures. Also, since some of the interviewees are still in the scope of the extreme event, their evaluations might not be accurate and objective enough. Finally, the study only focused on Iraq. In order to address the limitations this study brings forth more research should be conducted on extreme events in different countries inviting a larger number of interviewees from various nations to increase the validity of the results. Moreover, in-depth research about the main sources of psychological empowerment in extreme contexts is needed, in addition to its development and maintenance. Finally, comparative research should be conducted about the ideal characteristics of a Responsible Leader in extreme contexts. More specifically, the study should compare Responsible Leaders having previous experiences with extreme events versus those who do not.