The Imperative of Leadership While Forming a Strategy for Ensuring Economic Security of an Enterprise in Times of Crisis

The study examines the importance of leadership in developing a strategy to ensure the economic security of enterprises in crisis conditions. The study emphasizes the significance of strategic leadership in fostering resilient and adaptable organizations that can thrive in a dynamic environment. The primary objective of this article is to establish a conceptual framework and methodological tools for identifying and prioritizing threats to economic security, utilizing a combination of classical statistical and ensemble machine learning methods. The study focuses on Ukrainian industrial enterprises using information from PrJSC Khmilnyk Sewing Factory “Lileia”, which faced the full-scale consequences of the turmoil associated with military actions. The empirical base comprises four rounds of expert surveys, yielding 67 reliable observations. These observations were analyzed using the “Random Forest” algorithm to rank twenty identified hazards according to their impact on economic security. The results confirmed the hypothesis that the leadership imperative, manifested through proactive management, is a determining factor in the effectiveness of strategic management and ensuring economic security. Seven key threats were prioritized, among which military actions, market competition, and logistical problems are the most critical. The novelty of the study lies in the integration of leadership-based strategic imperatives with quantitative risk modeling to transform a set of hazards into a ranked subset of threats expressed as normalized risk values. The results can be applied by senior management to improve decision-making processes, align organizational strategies with real threats, and develop adaptive mechanisms for enterprise resilience in crisis and post-crisis conditions.