36 Organization Leadership and Development Quarterly (OLDQ) Vol.2, Iss.4 Responsible Leadership and Downsizing in Difficult Times Babatunde Ayoola Fajimi, Ph.D. Received: September 14, 2020 Accepted: September 25, 2020 Published: October 01, 2020 Abstract Executive management is the top echelon in organizational hierarchy. Organizations downsize as an executive management decision mostly during difficult times to redress internal inefficiencies and survive bankruptcy or macroeconomic crises. Difficult times are forces of technology, competition, intellectual capital migration, globalization, or pandemic which create disruptive changes in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment for the organization. These forces come suddenly and they are least expected and unplanned. Keywords: Leadership, Downsizing, Executive Management, VUCA Introduction Leadership Role in Executive Management Executive management is the top echelon in organizational hierarchy. It is vested with the responsibility for strategy, leadership, decision making and administration of their organizations. In everyday life, members of the management team are usually busy with managing day-to- day business operations that when difficult times come, they are caught unprepared. They often panic (even when they do not show such emotion), and roll out business models that Sucher and Gupta (2018) described as episodic restructuring or routine layoffs. This response is predictable and tends to follow Atilola (2017) argument that every organization is entitled to choose what it considers the best fit business model or transformation agenda that aligns with its corporate objectives and reinforces its brand equity or share of the market for profitability and sustainability. Downsizing in Difficult Times As simple and innocuous as this management responsibility and choice of decision in VUCA environment during difficult times may seem, academic literature and industry practice have documented the inadequacies and failure of downsizing in Organization Leadership and Development Quarterly Abbreviated Title: OLDQ ISSN: 2663-0478 (P) ISSN: 2707-6083(O) Volume.2, Issue.4; 2020 Centre for Organization Leadership and Development (COLD), Harare, Zimbabwe