Organizational competences for innovation and resilience: Insights from a research project on crisis management during Covid19 in five European countries
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Florian Roth
Fraunhofer ISI Germany
florian.roth@isi.fraunhofer.de
Author(s):
Thomas Jackwerth-Rice1 , Florian Neisser2 , Johannes Sautter3 and Benjamin Kaluza4
1Fraunhofer ISI, Thomas.Jackwerth-Rice@Isi.Fraunhofer.De, DEU
2Fraunhofer INT, Florian.Neisser@Int.Fraunhofer.De, DEU
3Fraunhofer IAO, Johannes.Sautter@Iao.Fraunhofer.De, DEU
4Fraunhofer INT, Benjamin.Kaluza@Int.Fraunhofer.De, DEU
Public organizations involved in combatting crises face the dual challenge of activating their original crisis management competencies while creating new competencies without creating new inflexibilities (Stark, 2014). Those competencies that could strengthen the organization’s resilience could then be radically new, because they are triggered by the crisis-specific requirements: urgency, novelty, long-lasting, transboundary. In this respect, however, the formal (bureaucratic) structures of public organizations usually tend to be relatively stable, because they are less exposed to external demands from customers or markets as compared to companies (Boin, 2019; Rochet et al., 2018; Eckhard et al. 2020).
We present first results from the ongoing research project KResCo, which follows the question of which organizational competencies have proved particularly helpful in coping with the Corona crisis. Our analysis looks at the formal and informal structures in national and subnational crisis management organizations in five European countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. Particularly, we examine innovation and learning processes in the context of Covid19 pandemic related to three core capabilities related to successful crisis management: anticipation, coping, and adaptation.
Building resilience through organisational learning and innovation: COVID-19, windows of opportunity, and the future of cooperation in crisis management