Antecedent Crisis Leadership: A Capability‐Based Theory of Leadership Before Collective Crisis Recognition

ABSTRACT Contemporary crisis leadership research increasingly extends beyond crisis response to encompass preparation, resilience, and adaptation across the crisis lifecycle. However, existing approaches remain oriented towards leadership after crisis recognition and provide limited explanation of how organisational actors interpret and integrate ambiguous observations into actionable understandings of emerging threats before organisational consensus forms. This article develops Antecedent Crisis Leadership (ACL) to explain how organisational actors enable anticipatory action before collective crisis recognition. Using a conceptual theory‐development approach, the article synthesises scholarship on crisis management, crisis leadership, weak signals, organisational sensemaking, strategic leadership, and organisational resilience. ACL is defined as a leadership capability through which organisational actors interpret and integrate multiple ambiguous and apparently disconnected observations, construct plausible crisis trajectories, and enable anticipatory intervention before organisational consensus recognises crisis conditions. The model comprises four interrelated capabilities, namely weak signal detection, prospective sensemaking, crisis trajectory construction, and intervention under uncertainty. ACL contributes to crisis leadership and crisis management scholarship by explaining how representations of future organisational vulnerability support anticipatory action. Practically, the model highlights connecting dispersed observations and undertaking proportionate intervention while uncertainty persists. As a conceptual model without empirical validation, ACL requires examination across organisational and crisis contexts.