What Drives Successful Administrative Performance during Crises? Lessons from Refugee Migration and the Covid‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Covid‐19 pandemic affects societies worldwide, challenging not only health sectors but also public administration systems in general. Understanding why public administrations perform well in the current situation—and in times of crisis more generally—is theoretically of great importance, and identifying concrete factors driving successful administrative performance under today's extraordinary circumstances could still improve current crisis responses. This article studies patterns of sound administrative performance with a focus on networks and knowledge management within and between crises. Subsequently, it draws on empirical evidence from two recent public administration surveys conducted in Germany in order to test derived hypotheses. The results of tests for group differences and regression analyses demonstrate that administrations that were structurally prepared, learned during preceding crises, and displayed a high quality in their network cooperation with other administrations and with the civil society, on average, performed significantly better in the respective crises. Evidence for Practice While practitioners often prefer centralized and hierarchical solutions in times of crisis, this study highlights the potential of reflexive and adaptive use of multiactor networks to cope with the extraordinary. Administrations that are prepared and that display a high quality in their network cooperation with other administrations and with civil society, on average, performed significantly better in their respective crises. Knowledge management and resource sharing—both among administrative units and with civil society—increase organizational ability to perform well in crisis situations. Administrations do best when lessons learned in crises are accessibly stored and when previously successful crisis networks can be quickly revitalized, thus allowing for intercrisis learning—documentation of best practices during crises—via smart or traditional forms of data storing and organizational memory keeping—further boost the performance of administrations during succeeding crises. In the early stages of a crisis, decision makers need to invest in organizational self‐awareness of how challenges are mastered and how insights about optimal coping are best passed on.

How Well Do They Manage a Crisis? The Government's Effectiveness During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Indeed, the literature emphasizes that in large-scale crises the coordination of efforts based on trust and transparency is the key to an effective response, especially in creeping crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Alexander 2018;Boin, Ekengren, and Rhinard 2020a;Boin, Hart, and Kuipers 2018, 27;Schomaker and Bauer 2020). At the starting point of a creeping crisis, these relationships significantly influence the scope, damage, and time frame of the crisis, and also have a strong impact on how it evolves and its scope and length.…”

“…Studies indicate that these process variables may be related to outcomes variables such as satisfaction with and trust in the public sector (Vigoda-Gadot and Mizrahi 2014). The rationale implies that effective managerial standards and procedures most likely lead to good results (Schomaker and Bauer 2020). Thus, we hypothesize that citizens' perceptions about public sector performance will be positively related to their perceptions about the effectiveness of the government's crisis management.…”

Embedding Expertise for Policy Responses to COVID-19: Comparing Decision-Making Structures in Two Federal Democracies

“…Federalism can proceed in either centralist or devolved directions. At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, both Belgium and Australia – along with other federations like Switzerland and Austria – put a lot of emphasis on containing the pandemic at the federal level; in other federations such as Germany and the United States most decision making was made at the state level (Schomaker & Bauer, 2020 ).…”

From New Public Management to Public Sector Management Reforms during the pandemic. The effects of Covid-19 on public management reforms and effectiveness

“…Among different public administrations, in the current crisis due to Covid-19, those public administrations that had learned from their experiences in dealing with previous crises (epidemiological, financial, etc. ), had more organized and more flexible structures (Schomaker & Bauer, 2020). As is well known, in Greece after February 2020 the government and the administration reacted to the pandemic relatively early, with restrictive measures for the operation of public services and private companies, traffic restrictions and support measures for businesses and employees (Diellas, 2020;…”