No matter how effective conventional safety devices are, there is a form of accident that is inevitable’,(Perrow, 1999) Perrow warned in his book against high-risk technologies which raised many arguments against it. However, there are forms of accident which the society cannot avoid and must face together, for example earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfire and epidemic outbreak. There are plenty of such disasters throughout the global history, different governments or authorities respond these disasters in different ways, thus lead to different outcomes. One thing is for sure, to manage these incidents, solely organization or agency is definitely not enough, a network governance which involves all necessary agencies, departments, organization and individuals is required. There are different structural configurations in the network governance which in many cases become a dominant factor of the incident management effect. There is significant debate about the appropriate governance structure in disaster response(Norwell, Steelman, Velez& Yang, 2018), some even wonder, if there is a perfect network mechanism to deal with all these disasters. However, as is a common sense, no one can summarize a perfect structural configuration in any kinds of network governance, what we can do and is also meaningful is to analyze and evaluate the performance of each network structure in different incident response cases by adopting a common evaluating standard, hoping to find out some structural advantages and disadvantages to enlighten the future incident management and further study related.
This paper specifically focuses on the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan, China which has raised the world’s attention in the past month. Apparently, virus spread is an inevitable natural disaster which contains a lot of complexities requiring a high-performing incident response network. What is the network structure Chinese authority using in this incident management? Is it a well-performing network? What are its advantages and disadvantages we can find out in this case?
How to address the analysis of the case and which theoretical tools to be applied will be explicitly explained in the following chapters method and theory. The analysis part will be right after these two sessions and a wrap up conclusion which mainly represent the findings of the analysis will be at the end of the paper.
Theory
The case study is to analyze the incident response performance of Chinese authority from the network perspective. Here network refers to a group of organizations connected in ways to facilitate the accomplishment of a common goal (Provan et al., 2007). To answer the first research question, what is the network structure Chinese authority using in this incident management, we need to first know what kinds of network structure are there in general. Fortunately, there are plenty of network typology researches done by network experts. Here I will select the three most prominent types of network structures to illustrate, mainly based on the literature from Norwell, Steelman, Velez& Yang (2018).
Three network structure types
Among so many different types network structure, the centralized networks and the closed networks raise the most attention and debates(Norwell, Steelman, Velez& Yang, 2018). The most highly centralized network links its sub-organizations exclusively through the single centralized actor in a hierarchical linear form. On the contrary, the most extreme closed network refers to a network in which there is a high level of connectivity across all actors in the network without a central actor. (Figures see below)
The centralized model of network is the most common design in incident response system, because from the structural logic perspective, the single incident command can best deliver the resources, information and orders to the various agencies and organizations so that guarantee the most important factor in incident response-efficiency. However, the appropriateness of centralized network structure in dynamic contexts has also received a significant degree of criticism (Norwell, Steelman, Velez& Yang, 2018). If a disaster concerns too many issues and arouses a great deal of complexity which in the end exceed the capacity the central incident command, the whole centralized network will collapse. This assumption indicates the vulnerability of centralized networks, thus decentralized or brokered networks are created, in which subgroups are orderly connected together through a series of brokers. All actors inside one broker form a highly connected closed small network. Meanwhile on the brokers level, all the brokers forms a platform in which all the brokers can communicate and exchange information and ideas. (Figure see below) The second criterion for a well-performed incident response system is well-distributed information management. In the coronavirus case, it refers to a rapid valid information flow about coronavirus following the hierarchical line within the multidimensional centralization network structure . It also refers to a horizontal information flow among same level actors and information exchange arenas. Significant disasters like the coronavirus case are coupled with potentially rapid condition change. (Norwell, Steelman, Velez& Yang, 2018) When the right time come, letting the information disperse across the border line of network and integrating the formerly peripheral or uninvolved actors into the network is also crucial to the performance of incident response.
In the first phase of incident response, the incident response system for epidemic disease was basically the established NNDRS. Valid report about the unknown respiratory virus took less than one week to flow from the lowest level of hospital to the national level health information exchange arena. Some people criticized that the multidimensional lineal information flow from bottom to top within the NNDRS was too slow in the coronavirus case. The system was designed in the procedure that at each level of the alerting system, the report must be carefully reviewed and supplemented with more details and then handed in to the higher level. These people argued that such design only works for normal epidemic disease but cannot cope with the acute virus spread like coronavirus.(Chai, K., 2020) What’s more, they also believe that the multidimensional report design also increase the chance of information stagnation. Huge responsibility and stress is on the shoulder of every doctor and reviewer who decide to report the information to a higher dimension, because misreporting of infectious diseases can have a significant impact on the local economy and social stability. Therefore, it is very likely to be affected by government and human intervention, concealment and delay in reporting. We don’t know if there was such kind of interference factor played a big role from outside or periphery of the network in the coronavirus case because many truth still remains unrevealed. However, facticity of the information in the incident response is really important. Spread of fake information could cause no less harm than the delay of information flow. Such consideration of the multidimensional review from this perspective is necessary for the successful management of incident response. Besides, in the coronavirus case, the information flowed to the national level information arena within one week in fact is not slow. The Chinese health authority sent first group of experts to Wuhan to investigate the new virus on 30th December, 2019, in the same day, Wuhan disease control center also conveyed urgent notifications to all the Wuhan hospitals. At this time the situation was far from out of control. So it is proper to say the lineal information flow within the multidimensional network functioned normally in the first phase of incident response. What really missed was the horizontal information flow between the same level public health information exchange arenas. For example, there was no horizontal information sharing to other city disease control centers inside Hubei province. Wuhan disease control center has no such autonomy and authority to share the information of the unknown virus to alert the same level organizations in advance. Reminders and early warnings to other horizontal actors within the network can only rely on the information distribution of NNDRS. However, the truth is, the NNDRS itself failed in information distribution as it should have done. Reasons behind is that the real center of the Chinese incident response system is almost always the central government due to its polity and political culture. Without the final decision from the central government, NNDRS network itself as a whole cannot automatically distribute unclear information about the virus to its sub-dimensions. Meanwhile decision-makers from the central government still didn’t realize the seriousness of the potential consequence at the end of first phase, they tended to constrain the information of the virus within the vertical line of network before they got more verified and certain information. Their consideration was similar to the local government, not let the news of unknown virus influence the economy and social stability. Such consideration could also explain why the Wuhan government deliberately blocked the information flow from inside the incident response network to the peripheral societal domain at the end of December 2019, when a Chinese doctor Wenliang Li from Wuhan Central Hospital privately warned his fellow colleagues about new coronavirus through his personal social media and his warning were later shared publicly. On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for ‘spreading fake news'. So it’s fair to conclude that the centralization model of incident response network Chinese government applied severely hindered the normal information flow in the first phase of the coronavirus case, which must take an inescapable blame for the massive coronavirus outbreak.
In the second phase of incident response, when the central government finally realized the seriousness of the coronavirus and paid unprecedent attention to it, it mobilized countless domains and actors joined in the network structure and played important roles in it. Not only the both way information distribution following the hierarchical order but also the information flow among these actors from all involved domains were relatively quick and smooth. At this period, the former centralized network model gradually possessed some decentralized characteristics of closure model network in which sub-groups had certain level connection with each other orderly or disorderly. It was achieved not only through formal information exchange level like cooperation in information sharing among hospitals, but also through social media among all actors of the society. However, when all the channels of information flow was suddenly opened, the validity of information could be a problem for the success of collaborative cooperation. For example there was a fake information related to the prevention of coronavirus widely spread in Chinese social media that a certain brand of Chinese medicine had special effect. But when the actors inside the network have a common goal and willing to collaborate and trust the central actor, the validity of information could be well guaranteed by the state -owned media like how it was done in China. Thus it is appropriate to claim that in the case of coronavirus, after the central actor fully take good advantage of its centralized power to mobilize and absorb all necessary actors into the incident response network, the centralized model network did a good job in structural adaption and upgrade, hence benefit rapid information flow.
Evaluation of the bilateral coordination and collective action performance of the network
Well performance of bilateral coordination and collective action among actors inside the network requires high density of interdependent interest and goal intertwinement. However, not like other networks solving complexities like public infrastructure building in which actors have many different goals and interests that joint image building is very difficult to reach, actors within incident response network have in most cases common goal as long as they are all aware of what kind of disaster they are facing. So for incident response network, transparent and free information flow is the premise of goal intertwinement and joint image building which lead to the success of bilateral coordination and collective performance.
As analyzed above, the information flow appeared total different states in the first phase and second phase of the incident response of coronavirus. In the first phase, information and knowledge about coronavirus was strictly constrained inside the vertical path of NNDRS and a few other domains because subdimensions of the centralized model network have barely no autonomy to decide and act. So at this period when other cities and provinces or departments hadn’t even heard of coronavirus, there was of course very little bilateral coordination and collective action of the incident response. For example, there wasn’t any population mobility control which is considered as the most important approach to suppress the spread of coronavirus before 23rd January.
In the second period when the whole country was under the level one emergency state to respond the coronavirus outbreak, due to the extremely powerful central government and its uncontestable administrative order, bilateral to multilateral coordination along with collective action among all kinds of departments is proceeding all over the country under the leadership of local administrative authorities. For example, to prevent further massive virus spread between human to human, unnecessary human contact with anyone who do not live with you could be potentially dangerous. A full-coverage network structure of population mobility control based on grassroots communities was hence rapidly established nationwide. Each neighborhood or community has set up specific department to examine and record people who enter in and get out of the community in cooperation with the local police office and public health center. If someone disobeys the urgent temporary rule of getting temperature check before enter in the community, the security guard from the control department has the right to call the police. When someone from the community has suspected symptom of coronavirus, the person will be immediately sent to hospital for further examination. When the test result is positive, the epidemic prevention department of the community also has to call the health center to impose compulsory lockdown to the neighbors who live in the same building and also do test against each of them.
Such operational approach has raised huge criticism especially in western world that the legitimacy of these executive orders like city lockdown and transportation constriction itself was problematic. The central government shouldn’t have such great power to give such executive order which relates to tens of millions people’s life and basic human rights without a widespread debate among society and a proper legitimation process. Assuming in a closure model incident response network or a brokerage one when there is no strong central management, decisions like city lockdown definitely cannot be approved by the parliament or the supreme court in such short time. However, the independent variable of analysis of incident response network structure is its performance in managing the disaster, procedural justice is not the main focus here. As Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO Emergencies Program at media briefing on Coronavirus remarked, ‘We would like to see well-thought, evident-based public health method that pay due respect to people’s individual liberty and human rights. But finding that balance is very difficult. And right now the strategic and tactic approach in China is correct.’ For the particular case of coronavirus outbreak, only in a highly centralized model network in which the executive as central actor with absolute power over legislative and jurisdictional can rapidly clear away all the possible obstacles to promote coordination and cooperation among all the actors within network.
Conclusion
The dependent variable of the case study is the performance of Chinese incident response system in the coronavirus case. The independent variable is the type of network structure of Chinese incident response system. The focus of the research is what kind of impact network structure have on the performance of incident response system.
In the analysis part, I first identified the multidimensional centralization model of network structure China applied in the coronavirus case. Then I have analyzed the performance of Chinese incident response system from the network structure perspective. The evaluation is based on four criteria of a well-functioning incident response system which include rapid adapt