Leaders’ empathy in crisis: untangling the value of emotional empathy and perspective-taking

Abstract

This study examines the distinct influence of CEOs’ cognitive and emotional empathy responses to an environmental crisis. Grounded in König et al.’s (2020) theory of empathetic leadership, our research aims to untangle how different dimensions of empathy impact leaders' decision-making speed and employee perceptions during the pandemic. Using archival data from 42 Fortune 500 US retail companies, the study analyzed CEO press releases (n = 197) and employee ratings on Glassdoor (n = 1,835) during the initial COVID-19 pandemic wave (January-April 2020). We employed text analysis to measure displays of cognitive and emotional empathy in CEO statements and examined their relationships with public response timing and employee approval ratings. CEOs with higher cognitive empathy issued public responses more quickly following the onset of the crisis, whereas those with higher emotional empathy exhibited delayed responses. CEO tenure significantly moderated these relationships: longer-tenured CEOs with high cognitive empathy responded more slowly, while experienced CEOs with high emotional empathy responded more promptly. Cognitive empathy was positively associated with employee approval ratings, whereas emotional empathy showed a positive association that did not hold after accounting for cognitive empathy. This study advances theoretical understanding by empirically distinguishing between cognitive and emotional empathy dimensions in leadership contexts and addressing persistent measurement limitations in empathy research. Our findings reveal divergent pathways through which empathy dimensions impact crisis management, demonstrating that cognitive empathy facilitates faster public crisis communication (i.e., communication responsiveness), while emotional empathy may benefit less-experienced leaders with more deliberate decision-making.