TY - JOUR
A1 - Hecke, Steven van
A1 - Fuhr, Harald
A1 - Wolfs, Wouter
T1 - The politics of crisis management by regional and international organizations in fighting against a global pandemic
BT - the member states at a crossroads
JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration
N2 - Despite new challenges like climate change and digitalization, global and regional organizations recently went through turbulent times due to a lack of support from several of their member states. Next to this crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic now seems to question the added value of international organizations for addressing global governance issues more specifically. This article analyses this double challenge that several organizations are facing and compares their ways of managing the crisis by looking at their institutional and political context, their governance structure, and their behaviour during the pandemic until June 2020. More specifically, it will explain the different and fragmented responses of the World Health Organization, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. With the aim of understanding the old and new problems that these international organizations are trying to solve, this article argues that the level of autonomy vis-a-vis the member states is crucial for understanding the politics of crisis management.
Points for practitioners
As intergovernmental bodies, international organizations require authorization by their member states. Since they also need funding for their operations, different degrees of autonomy also matter for reacting to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential for international organizations is limited, though through proactive and bold initiatives, they can seize the opportunity of the crisis and partly overcome institutional and political constraints.
KW - autonomy
KW - COVID-19
KW - crisis management
KW - European Union
KW - International
KW - Monetary Fund
KW - international organizations
KW - multilateralism
KW - World Bank
KW - World Health Organization
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320984516
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 3
SP - 672
EP - 690
PB - Sage
CY - Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.]
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kraus, Sascha
A1 - Clauss, Thomas
A1 - Breier, Matthias
A1 - Gast, Johanna
A1 - Zardini, Alessandro
A1 - Tiberius, Victor
T1 - The economics of COVID-19
BT - initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis
JF - International journal of entrepreneurial behaviour & research
N2 - Purpose
Within a very short period of time, the worldwide pandemic triggered by the novel coronavirus has not only claimed numerous lives but also caused severe limitations to daily private as well as business life. Just about every company has been affected in one way or another. This first empirical study on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on family firms allows initial conclusions to be drawn about family firm crisis management.
Design/methodology/approach
Exploratory qualitative research design based on 27 semi-structured interviews with key informants of family firms of all sizes in five Western European countries that are in different stages of the crisis.
Findings
The COVID-19 crisis represents a new type and quality of challenge for companies. These companies are applying measures that can be assigned to three different strategies to adapt to the crisis in the short term and emerge from it stronger in the long run. Our findings show how companies in all industries and of all sizes adapt their business models to changing environmental conditions within a short period of time. Finally, the findings also show that the crisis is bringing about a significant yet unintended cultural change. On the one hand, a stronger solidarity and cohesion within the company was observed, while on the other hand, the crisis has led to a tentative digitalization.
Originality/value
To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first empirical study in the management realm on the impacts of COVID-19 on (family) firms. It provides cross-national evidence of family firms' current reactions to the crisis.
KW - Corona
KW - COVID-19
KW - crisis management
KW - familiy firms
KW - strategic management
KW - business model adaption
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-04-2020-0214
SN - 1355-2554
SN - 1758-6534
VL - 26
IS - 5
SP - 1067
EP - 1092
PB - Emerald
CY - Bingley
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kuhlmann, Sabine
A1 - Bouckaert, Geert
A1 - Galli, Davide
A1 - Reiter, Renate
A1 - van Hecke, Steven
T1 - Opportunity management of the COVID-19 pandemic
BT - testing the crisis from a global perspective
JF - International review of administrative sciences
N2 - This article provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of COVID-19 crisis governance in the first half of 2020 from a cross-country comparative perspective. It focuses on the issue of opportunity management, that is, how the crisis was used by relevant actors of distinctly different administrative cultures as a window of opportunity. We started from an overall interest in the factors that have influenced the national politics of crisis management to answer the question of whether and how political and administrative actors in various countries have used the crisis as an opportunity to facilitate, accelerate or prevent changes in institutional settings. The objective is to study the institutional settings and governance structures, (alleged) solutions and remedies, and constellations of actors and preferences that have influenced the mode of crisis and opportunity management. Finally, the article summarizes some major comparative findings drawn from the country studies of this Special Issue, focusing on similarities and differences in crisis responses and patterns of opportunity management.
KW - administrative culture
KW - comparison
KW - COVID-19
KW - crisis management
KW - governance
KW - opportunity management
KW - pandemic
KW - window of opportunity
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852321992102
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 3
SP - 497
EP - 517
PB - Sage
CY - Los Angeles, California
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kuhlmann, Sabine
A1 - Franzke, Jochen
A1 - Peters, Niklas
A1 - Dumas, Benoît Paul
T1 - Institutional designs and dynamics of crisis governance at the local level
BT - European governments facing the polycrisis
JF - Policy design and practice
N2 - This article analyses the institutional design variants of local crisis governance responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their entanglement with other locally impactful crises from a cross-country comparative perspective (France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the UK/England). The pandemic offers an excellent empirical lens for scrutinizing the phenomenon of polycrises governance because it occurred while European countries were struggling with the impacts of several prior, ongoing, or newly arrived crises. Our major focus is on institutional design variants of crisis governance (dependent variable) and the influence of different administrative cultures on it (independent variable). Furthermore, we analyze the entanglement and interaction of institutional responses to other (previous or parallel) crises (polycrisis dynamics). Our findings reveal a huge variance of institutional designs, largely evoked by country-specific administrative cultures and profiles. The degree of de-/centralization and the intensity of coordination or decoupling across levels of government differs significantly by country. Simultaneously, all countries were affected by interrelated and entangled crises, resulting in various patterns of polycrisis dynamics. While policy failures and “fatal remedies” from previous crises have partially impaired the resilience and crisis preparedness of local governments, we have also found some learning effects from previous crises.
KW - polycrisis
KW - pandemic
KW - local government
KW - intergovernmental relations
KW - public administration
KW - crisis management
KW - Germany
KW - France
KW - Poland
KW - Sweden
KW - United Kingdom
Y1 - 2024
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2024.2344784
SN - 2574-1292
SP - 1
EP - 21
PB - Taylor & Francis
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Thiele, Lukas
A1 - Pruin, Andree
T1 - Does large-scale digital collaboration contribute to crisis management?
T1 - Digitale Massenkollaboration als Teil von staatlichem Krisenmanagement?
BT - an analysis of projects from the #WirVsVirus hackathon implemented in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic
BT - eine Analyse von Projekten aus dem #WirVsVirus-Hackathon in Deutschland
JF - der moderne staat – Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management
N2 - In recent years, collaborative approaches to crisis management involving citizens have gained increasing attention. One example is the #WirVsVirus hackathon, which was conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and had over 28,000 participants. Because research on large-scale, digital collaboration in crisis situations is scarce, consequences of their use in crisis management remain unclear. This article relies on the open governance paradigm as a lens for studying two projects emerging from the hackathon. Based on nine qualitative expert interviews, we ask how digital open governance affects governance capacity and legitimacy in crisis management. Our findings suggest that digital open governance can contribute to governance capacity and legitimacy, as it mobilises large, diverse groups of citizens to quickly develop citizen-centric, ready-to-use solutions for crisisrelated problems. However, we also identified potential problems, including risks regarding legitimacy and accountability, difficulties with scalable solutions, and questionable long-term impacts.
N2 - Kollaborative, partizipative Instrumente zur Krisenbekämpfung haben in den letzten Jahren zunehmend an Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen. Ein Beispiel hierfür ist der #WirVsVirus-Hackathon, der als Reaktion auf die COVID-19-Pandemie durchgeführt wurde und über 28.000 Teilnehmer:innen erreichte. Bislang wurden die Auswirkungen solch groß angelegter, kollaborativer Ansätze zur Krisenbewältigung auf staatliches Krisenmanagement nur selten untersucht. Diese Studie analysiert den Hackathon und die daraus entstandenen Projekte aus der Perspektive des Open Governance-Paradigmas. Auf Grundlage von neun Experteninterviews untersuchen wir, wie sich digitale Open Governance auf die Regierungsfähigkeit und Legitimität in Krisenzeiten auswirkt. Unsere Analyse zeigt, dass digitale Open Governance zur Leistungsfähigkeit und Legitimität staatlichen Handelns in Krisenzeiten beitragen kann, da solche Projekte eine breite und diverse Teilnehmerschaft mobilisieren und in kurzer Zeit bürgerzentrierte, nutzbare Lösungen für krisenbezogene Probleme entwickeln können. Dem stehen allerdings Zweifel an der langfristigen Beständigkeit der Projekte, ihrer Skalierbarkeit, sowie Risiken hinsichtlich der Legitimität und Rechenschaftspflicht entgegen.
KW - open governance
KW - crisis management
KW - capacity
KW - legitimacy
KW - hackathon
KW - Open Governance
KW - Krisenmanagement
KW - Staatliche Leistungsfähigkeit
KW - Legitimität
KW - Hackathon
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3224/dms.v14i2.07
SN - 1865-7192
VL - 14
IS - 2-2021
SP - 334
EP - 350
PB - Verlag Barbara Budrich
CY - Leverkusen-Opladen
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Abramova, Olga
A1 - Batzel, Katharina
A1 - Modesti, Daniela
T1 - Collective response to the health crisis among German Twitter users
BT - a structural topic modeling approach
JF - International Journal of Information Management Data Insights
N2 - We used structural topic modeling to analyze over 800,000 German tweets about COVID-19 to answer the questions: What patterns emerge in tweets as a response to a health crisis? And how do topics discussed change over time? The study leans on the goals associated with the health information seeking (GAINS) model, discerning whether a post aims at tackling and eliminating the problem (i.e., problem-focused) or managing the emotions (i.e., emotion-focused); whether it strives to maximize positive outcomes (promotion focus) or to minimize negative outcomes (prevention focus). The findings indicate four clusters salient in public reactions: 1) “Understanding” (problem-promotion); 2) “Action planning” (problem-prevention); 3) “Hope” (emotion-promotion) and 4) “Reassurance” (emotion-prevention). Public communication is volatile over time, and a shift is evidenced from self-centered to community-centered topics within 4.5 weeks. Our study illustrates social media text mining's potential to quickly and efficiently extract public opinions and reactions. Monitoring fears and trending topics enable policymakers to rapidly respond to deviant behavior, like resistive attitudes toward containment measures or deteriorating physical health. Healthcare workers can use the insights to provide mental health services for battling anxiety or extensive loneliness from staying home.
KW - social media
KW - Twitter
KW - modeling
KW - regulatory focus theory
KW - crisis management
KW - text mining
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jjimei.2022.100126
SN - 2667-0968
VL - 2
IS - 2
PB - Elsevier
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Khaw, Khai Wah
A1 - Camilleri, Mark
A1 - Tiberius, Victor
A1 - Alnoor, Alhamzah
A1 - Zaidan, Ali Shakir
T1 - Benchmarking electric power companies' sustainability and circular economy behaviors
BT - using a hybrid PLS-SEM and MCDM approach
JF - Environment, development and sustainability
N2 - This research examines the impact of firms’ decision-making, crisis management, and risk-taking behaviors on their sustainability and circular economy behaviors through the mediating role of their eco-innovation behavior in the energy industry in Iraq. Firms are exploring applicable mechanisms to increase green practices. This requires the industry to possess the essential skills to overcome the challenges that reduce sustainable activities. We applied a dual-stage structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to explore the linear relationships between variables, determine the weight of the criteria, and rank energy companies based on a circular economy. The online questionnaire was sent to 549 managers and heads of departments of Iraqi electric power companies. Out of these, 384 questionnaires were collected. The results indicate that firms’ crisis management, decision-making, and risk-taking behaviors are significantly and positively linked to their eco-innovation behavior. This study confirms the significant and positive impact of firms’ eco-innovation behavior on their sustainability and circular economy behaviors. Likewise, eco-innovation behavior has a fully mediating role. For the MCDM methods, ranking energy companies according to the circular economy can support policymakers’ decisions to renew contracts with leading companies in the ranking. Practitioners can also impose government regulations on low-ranked companies. Thus, governments can reduce the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollution.
KW - eco-innovation
KW - circular economy
KW - crisis management
KW - decision-making
KW - risk-taking
KW - sustainability
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-02975-x
SN - 1387-585X
SN - 1573-2975
VL - 35
PB - Springer
CY - Dordrecht
ER -