Frances L. Edwards,J. Steven Ott
Lessons Learned, Opportunities Developed: Building Administrative and Governance Capacities Through the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Eras
Lessons Learned, Opportunities Developed: Building Administrative and Governance Capacities Through the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Eras

COVID-19 erupted across the world in late 2019 and early 2020 with little warning, requiring nations to use pandemic flu plans as a backbone for responding to this new disease, for which there was no vaccine, no treatment, no cure. By December 2022 when it had become endemic, and with no end in sight, COVID-19 had killed more than 6.65 million people world-wide. New massive outbreaks of COVID-19 variants are being experienced in multiple nations in 2023. Residents generally expected their governments to be ready to save their lives, yet shortages of ventilators, personal protective equipment, medical supplies, and medical personnel made fighting the disease challenging, even in the most developed nations. Wealth has not appeared to be the deciding factor in COVID-19 impacts and deaths, as some of the world’s largest national economies have suffered high rates of disease, death and economic impact, while some smaller nations with strong social cohesion -- like South Korea and Vietnam -- have had lower incidences of disease and lower death rates. Have we learned any lessons that are useful in fighting the endemic disease in its endless new variants or that would be useful in confronting another novel virus outbreak? Researchers from many nations have been investigating how different countries have confronted COVID-19. Universal precautions initially were masking, social distancing and lockdowns. Then testing became possible, and challenges related to messaging to diverse populations, trust in government and pharmaceutical production and supply chain problems developed. Lockdowns were followed by a summer of unrest in many nations including the United States as people revolted against government strictures, perceived intrusions into personal choices, and perceived failures. Operation Warp Speed in the US and similar efforts in other nations resulted in the development of vaccines that provided protection against the worst forms of COVID-19, including death from the disease but not usually against infection. Then there were problems convincing the population to receive the new vaccines with limited testing available. Messaging wasa challenge especially in diverse populations, distrust in government led to vaccine resistance in many places, and misleading and dishonest social media postings deterred yet more people from getting vaccinated or taking the boosters as they became available. Governments everywhere have had to learn “on the fly” with limited data to support their decisions and frequently have had to learn when faced with overwhelming mis-information and conspiracy theories. Government officials world-wide have had to make decisions that require populations and business establishments to change their behaviors although faced with “considerable disagreement about which measures best represent ‘successful’ government interventions” (Edwards & Ott, 2021, 880). What have we learned from the depredations of COVID-19? We looked back to the 1918 flu epidemic that went around the world twice and killed 50 million people worldwide in an age without vaccines and effective therapies. We looked at the decline in investment in public health as antibiotics convinced the general public that diseases could be cured with a shot of some drug. Laurie Garrett’s (1995, 2000) warnings of the dangers of failing public health systems in the 1990s went unheard. The U. S. federal government invested millions of dollars in the Metropolitan Medical Response System after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Tokyo Sarin attack and the Oregon salad bar poisoning, preparing 121 US cities for attacks with chemical, nuclear, radiological, explosive and biological materials. Yet history did not teach the lessons needed to successfully manage a novel corona virus in an age of air travel and widespread skeptical publics, leading to a rapid spread of contagion. Social distancing and lockdowns were the primary tools used to battle contagion in the early days of the disease, but at a high cost for some segments of society. The closure of the non-essential businesses put millions of people out of work, many of whom had limited resources without an income. Social services for the elderly often were not delivered. Children who relied on school for meals went hungry. Children lost years of learning as they tried – often unsuccessfully – to adjust to “distance learning.” The reality of the “digital divide” was demonstrated by children whose education was disrupted by a lack of technology and internet connections at home. Eventually many of these deficiencies were remedied through government and private sector collaborations, but by 2022 it was clear that children had not acquired the expected levels of subject matter competency during the two lost years of non-traditional instruction (Mervosh, 2022). This Special Edition of the Public Organization Review includes articles from an international group of authors who reflect on aspects of the COVID response in multiple nations. What lessons can be taken from this scholarship to create greater resiliency against future contagious diseases? What administrative and governance capacities have been created or enhanced during the pandemic and in the endemic phase? In September 2022, the U.S. White House issued a report by The Steering Committee for Pandemic Innovation that identified five transformational capabilities: transforming medical defenses, ensuring situational awareness, strengthening public health systems, building core capabilities and managing the mission (White House Steering Committee for Pandemic Innovation, 2022). These aspirational statements have led to new national investments and initiatives, but will they be enough? Can they be sustained as other more salient issues grab the public’s attention and the Congressional checkbook? How have the lessons of COVID been learned in other nations? It is evident from the studies included in this special issue that many governments have demonstrated some degree of agility, flexibility and innovation during the pandemic, but most local, state/provincial, and national governments have lagged, resisted change, and have not learned well from previous experiences including the combined hurricane-pandemic in New Orleans and the SARS epidemic in China (Ma and Christensen, 2021).We have also learned that public agencies must create equity in service delivery, working toward the removal of barriers for all so that the distribution of resources becomes not only equitable but also just.. ... (And), We may be able to create some things that are good out of trying to respond to something so disruptive as COVID-19. For example, NGO-governmental partnerships that transcend a crisis and become part of the emergency management cycle of preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation in a community could be a long-term benefit. Natural hazards will continue to happen more frequently and with more intensity, seasonally and cyclically. Using lessons such as the impacts of climate change to deal with other endemic threats from the long running COVID challenge may strengthen our communities for the long-term challenges. As public administrators we must learn to balance the economy with children’s education; rebuild safe housing while balancing the needs of elderly homeowners for economic stability; manage the trade-offs between societal safety and the price of individual freedom; respect religious beliefs while maintaining community security (Ott, Edwards & Boonyarak, 2021, 621). Overall, what are some of the most important lessons that have been learned? We briefly present only a few here that stand out for us. A first important lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is the need for internal national supply chains for critical medical and pharmaceutical goods. The original COVID-19 crisis began with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical personnel in many nations, with most relying on suppliers in China. The long supply chains and the ability of another government to redirect supplies of essential equipment created an obvious need for intra-national capability to supply the PPE. This “lesson” will impact global trade, business economics and transportation in world-wide supply chains. Similarly, the availability of pharmaceuticals and treatment modalities had been impacted by delays in transporting essential goods. Responses differed widely. For example, in the US, the Ford Motor Company quickly transformed one of its car assembly lines into a ventilator assembly line to meet the demand that exceeded the international supply chain capabilities. A sportswear manufacturer turned the fabric into masks for medical professionals (Sheffi, 2020). There were also concerns about the quality control in some of the critical supply chains, notably for pharmaceutical components. Will these problems lead to insularity and damage the global supply chains needed for the movement of critical goods in normal times? Second, it is obvious that while scientists may have learned some valuable lessons, the general population and government policy makers often have not. For example, one of the most important lessons learned is that medical, public health, and policy “experts” have lost credibility world-wide. “Now that the world has experienced a global pandemic, it should have become painfully clear that people need to listen to experts. But that is not exactly how things have worked out” (Zakaria, 2021, 75,76). Several countries listened to and followed recommendations of the experts with mostly favorable results. “But there were also places where, after an initial period of deference, people questioned the recommendations of medical professionals and, in some cases refused to comply with them (Zakaria, 2021, 76). This problem has persisted partly because of the nature of science. Science is a search for answers. During any search, errors are inevitable. During the early stages of the pandemic, scientists were often wrong in their recommendations, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These errors contributed heavily to a further loss of confidence in the scientists – a lack of confidence that already existed among populists world-wide. Third, it is the quality of government and its willingness to act, not the quantity of government, that matters when responding to a pandemic. In the United States, “there is more to the story than just an inept White House. There were missteps across the government” (Zakaria, 2021, 30). In the introduction to our 2021 special issue of Public Organization Review on “Global Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” we asserted that “few government institutions are designed, structured or inclined to make policy decisions in this type of environment where ‘surprise management’ is required (Farazmand, 2009; Ott et al., 2021, 619). For example, a year or two ago it appeared that autocratic-type governments were more effective than democracies in their responses to the pandemic, but more recent developments do not support this assumption. Fourth, organizations in no single sector will be able to respond effectively to future pandemics. Businesses, governments, or NGOs cannot do it alone. Therefore, public administrators and business leaders will need a wide range of new skills to face the challenges including, for example, the ability and willingness to collaborate across sectoral lines and with new stakeholders in all three sectors in order to deliver essential services (Ott et al., 2021). Fifth, some lessons about effective service delivery across sectors have been learned, leading to new administrative capacities. The importance of having public health information delivered by trusted agents was made clear during the COVID pandemic (Edwards et al., 2022). In 2022, when an outbreak of monkeypox – now called mpox – was detected among gay men, robust public health messaging regarding personal protection was delivered by trusted messengers from NGOs in the LGBTQ community. This led to rapid acceptance of testing and vaccination regimes, stopping the spread of the disease by the fall of 2022. “[T]he decline of monkeypox revealed the power of public health to quash disease threats when politics and science align, a community mobilizes to protect its own, and medical advancements are deployed expeditiously” (Nirrapil, 2022). Sixth, government agencies must achieve equity in their service delivery. Barriers to the equitable and just distribution of medical and pharmaceutical resources must be removed (Ott et al., 2021). Heterogeneous communities like San Jose, California experimented with a variety of methods for engendering trust in public health initiatives and adding access for economically disadvantaged communities. Leaders in diverse communities and NGOs encouraged communities of color to get tested, and then to get vaccinated, not only through messaging, but also through exemplifying the desired behaviors. Testing and vaccination sites were moved into neighborhood shopping centers to enhance access for people without personal transportation. Public health messaging was delivered in multiple community languages and in multiple modes, including posters, radio and social media (Edwards et al., 2022). Seventh, if large segments of a population refuse to abide by government and scientists’ preventive recommendations, including particularly wearing face masks, social distancing, and receiving inoculations, no government strategy will be effective. “In many countries, you can see. . people suspicious of the establishment, relying on their own sources, doubting credentialed authorities, and placing partisanship ahead of the truth” (Zakaria, 2021, 87). If wide-spread disinformation and conspiracy theories are present, and voluntary participation is weak, pandemics cannot be controlled. Eighth, each country is “on its own” when confronted with a pandemic. “This emergency has highlighted one of the oldest truths about international life – that ultimately, countries are on their own. When the pandemic struck, nations that had long cooperated – in Europe, for example – shut their border and focused on their own survival” (Zakaria, 2021, 13). On the other hand, globalization is alive and well between pandemic peaks. People and commerce crossing national boundaries are endlessly carrying viruses with them. Ninth, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over although the U.S. terminated its COVID-19 emergency on April 10, 2023 (Watson, 2023). It had become endemic, so the emergency phase may have passed, but even with the availability of vaccines and boosters, 500 American per day were still dying of the disease in February 2023, when it was identified as the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, behind only heart disease, cancer and accidents, taking the lives of 182,500 annually (Mercury News Editorial Board, 2023). By April 2023, U.S. deaths dropped to 250 per day (Griffin, 2023). However, while many people around the world are suffering from COVID fatigue – tired of hearing about the pandemic – governments must remain vigilant, monitoring waste water, ensuring that vaccines and boosters are available – although maybe not free – and encouraging personal precautions like masking in crowded conditions. And finally, a few beneficial environmental lessons have been learned during the COVID-19 lockdown that will alter administrative strategies. In the first days, when almost all vehicle traffic stopped, the levels of air pollution in major cities like Beijing and Los Angeles dropped noticeably. In India the Himalayas became visible for the first time in decades. This unplanned experiment in transportation impacts to the environment has demonstrated the need to alter transportation fuels and emissions in the future. For example, researchers in Alaska noted the benefits to whales from the cessation of the noise from cruise ship passage, leading to plans to change the patterns of ship movement. By having the cruise ships travel in “pods” the noise could be limited in time, giving the animals more peaceful hours during the day. Similarly, guides in Africa noted the changes to animal behavior when the noise and vibrations from motorized guided tours stopped. Plans to limit the impact of tourist visits in the future will benefit wildlife (Attenborough & Beard, 2021). Now we turn to the new research in the articles that follow in this Special Issue. The first group of articles studies the impacts of COVID-19 on government agencies at the national, state/province and local levels in selected nations, and what was learned – and was not learned – from the experiences of lockdowns, mandated vaccinations, and other limitations on people’s lives that seldom had popular support that might help other nations. The second group of articles looks at aspects of countries’ nonprofit organizations that participated in the delivery of services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine impacts of the pandemic experience on these nonprofits. A third group examines people’s attitudes toward the limitations placed on their lives by government policies. The final article assesses lessons learned from leadership during the pandemic based on findings from 52 scholarly articles.

The articles in this Special Issue are presented in four parts.

In “Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implication from Governance Capacity and Legitimacy,” Jonas Lund-Tonnesson and Tom Christensen examine the learning that has occurred when the government in Norway – a liberal democracy – imposes strict rules on day-to-day life. The study uses interviews with high level government executives to discover which lessons a “high performing government” like Norway had learned while trying to limit contagion. Analytical capacity, regulatory capacity, service delivery capacity and governance legitimacy were key factors, but the study warns that different government actors had widely divergent interpretations about which learnings were important. Songjoo Choi and Soonae Park’ s article, “Governmental Transformation in the Era of the Post Pandemic: Fostering a Culture of Empowerment and Leadership to Manage Administrative Challenges,” studies pre-pandemic to post-pandemic changes in administrative styles or approaches to managing local governments’ responses to the pandemic. Local governments in South Korea had been moving toward newer styles of governance for several years – such as more employee-driven management – but the need to respond quickly to the pandemic led to “turbulent administrative environments.” As a consequence, hierarchical styles of governance became more pronounced during the pandemic years, undoing years of progress toward more modern government structures. Jahee Jong, Tochukwu Madueke and Kurt Thurmaier study the learning resulting from the challenges that townships in Illinois (USA) faced when confronted with significant increases in financial assistance caseloads, in “The Capacity for Illinois Townships to Manage Increased Financial Assistance Caseloads during COVID.” Because most townships have small staffs with limited capacity, maintaining adequate staffing and expanding inter-agency collaboration are essential for maintaining effective service delivery during crises. Social workers have been essential COVID-19-related service providers in Bangladesh. In “Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Towards COVID-19 Among Social Workers of Bangladesh,” Md. Rahman, Mohammed Sakib, Afra Rahman, Iftekharul Haque, Md. Hossain, & Md. Islam investigate the challenges facing social workers who worked with COVID-19 patients. Their research found that social workers face high risk of their own infection and lack knowledge of the disease, experience in providing services, and equipment and supplies. The article urges more effective preparation of social workers for the next crisis. In “Government Preparedness Towards Ebola and COVID-19 Health Crises in Ghana,” Joseph Antwi-Boasiako, & Griselde Asamoah-Gyado compare the government of Ghana’s response approaches to COVID-19 with its response to the previous crisis – the 2014 Ebola virus disease. The article concludes that Ghana’s COVID-19 response approach demonstrated significant learning from the Ebola crisis including having an operational public health emergency response infrastructure in place that could be activated quickly. When Covid-19 was spreading in other parts of the Sub-Saharan Africa, the Ebola preparedness and response plans were activated for implementation at the national, regional, district and community levels. Ghana’s preparedness serves as a good case study for other comparable countries to learn about preparing for future health crises.

Many nonprofits in Brazil are religiously affiliated. In “Religion-Spirituality Influences in the Governance of Faith-Based Organizations during the Covid Pandemic,” Elize Jacinto, Maria Clara Ames, Mauricio C. Serafim, and Marcello B. Zappelini examine the role of organized religions and individual faith in the delivery of pandemic services by nonprofits. Leaders of faith-based organizations working in children’s and adolescents’ rights provided information about the use of networks, relationship between faith-based nonprofits and governments, and the influence of religion and spirituality on services offered during the pandemic. Communications, networks, and interfaces developed among faith-based nonprofits that increased their capacity to respond to the pandemic, pointing to possible capacity-increasing approaches for faith-based nonprofits in other nations.

Yanzhe Zhang, Bowen Zou, Huai Zhang, & Jian Zha examine citizens’ attitudes toward governments’ policies and practices during the COVID-19 pandemic in, “Are Chinese Citizens Satisfied with Lockdown Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak Period? A Survey from Wuhan, Shulan, and Nanjing.” The authors assess the level of citizens’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction with strict lockdown measures and seek to identify factors that influenced the level of satisfaction. Significant factors influencing satisfaction included the government’s level of information disclosure, reasonable resource arrangements, and timeliness of government responses. Citizen satisfaction also was affected by the impact that a family or individual experienced and the specific strictures included in the “lockdowns.” This analysis can inform public policy-making and practices in other nations. In their case study on the public sector in Vietnam, Huy Quang Pham & Phuc Kien Vu ask “Does Public Value Commitment, Leadership, and Corporate Social Responsibility Fuel Accountant’s Productivity During the COVID-19 Pandemic and the New Normal?” Their study revealed that measures implemented to battle the COVID-19 pandemic including, for example, shelter in place directives and remote work environments, worsened employees’ feelings of social alienation and loneliness. Public value commitment serves as a primary means for leaders to establish a morally upright environment and thereby increase employee self-efficacy, motivation, creativity, and organizational effectiveness. When employees feel their leaders are competent, they increase their desire to put in extra effort.

“Pandemic Leadership: Is It Just a Matter of Good and Bad?” by Titik Setyaningsih, Indra Bastian, Choirunnisa Arifa, & Fuad Rakhman, examines findings from 52 scholarly articles about leadership of government responses to the global pandemic. The authors argue that more women must take leadership roles during crises. While certain theories, concepts, and methodologies may be ideal for specific countries and cultures, they may produce different outcomes when applied to different cultures and conflict-prone countries. Leaders must anticipate and plan ahead for pandemics and any other potential crisis that may arise.