Despite the important roles that academic managers play and the growing body of literature on online learning, research on the organisational level, such as management, remains underexplored, particularly within the context of interim online teaching. Therefore, our study aimed to fill this gap by examining academic managers' key roles and the challenges they experienced in migrating to interim online teaching. This case study involved eight academic managers from private and public higher education institutions in the Philippines, who were selected through purposive sampling. Using semi-structured interviews, the findings indicated that their roles and challenges across the six leadership functions intensified and expanded during the transition to interim online teaching. It is further revealed that these challenges and roles were shaped not only by individual and institutional factors, such as university culture and structure, technological resources, and institutional policies, but also by larger contextual factors, such as national policies, economic conditions, and the country's technological readiness. Implications for management development, policy-making, and future research are discussed.