Distributed Leadership and Organizational Resilience of Aviation Agencies in South-South, Nigeria

This study examined the relationship between distributed leadership and the organisational resilience of aviation agencies in South-South, Nigeria, using cooperation in the leadership team and leadership support as proxies of distributed leadership, and agility and robustness as measures of organisational resilience. Anchored on the positivist paradigm, the study adopted a cross-sectional explanatory survey design. The population comprised 768 middle-to-top-level managers of the six aviation agencies operating across the six states of the zone, from which a sample of 256 was determined using the Krejcie and Morgan formula and distributed through Bowley’s proportional allocation. Data were gathered with a structured, five-point Likert questionnaire whose validity and reliability were confirmed, and 230 usable copies (89.84% response rate) were analyzed through Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modelling (PLSSEM) via SmartPLS 4. The findings revealed a strong, positive and significant relationship between cooperation in the leadership team and agility (β = 0.881; p = 0.000), but a weak, nonsignificant relationship with robustness (β = 0.093; p = 0.522). Conversely, leadership support had no significant relationship with agility (β = –0.014; p = 0.718), yet a strong, positive and significant relationship with robustness (β = 0.816; p = 0.000). The study concludes that the components of distributed leadership are differentially, rather than uniformly, linked to resilience: cooperation in the leadership team is the paramount driver of agility, while leadership support is foundational for robustness. It recommends that aviation agencies pursue a targeted portfolio of leadership practices, cultivating top-team cooperation for speed and supportive leadership for enduring stability.