How Crises Solve Organisations: A Case Study from the Covid-19 Pandemic

How organisations work is not so easy to grasp under normal conditions, when formalised work processes, routines and division of labour tend to overshadow and black-box the adaptations and sensemaking taking place in organisational life. During crises, however, black boxes in organisations tend to be opened, allowing for reflexive inspection. This paper is based on a study of a municipal organisation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The objective of the paper is to investigate how crises can change organisations beyond the limited realm of preparedness and crisis management, and to introduce a niche across interrelated research literatures where this topic can be further pursued. Theoretically, we draw on safety and crisis literature, in combination with research literature on organisational innovation. For around 18 months, we performed in-depth studies of a Norwegian urban municipality's adaptation to continuity and leadership challenges. Results from the study shed light on two central aspects of how crises affect public governance organisations. A central finding is that long-standing emergency management principles and their preconditions are put to test. Not only do organisations solve crises, but crises also solve organisations; during crises, organisational potentials become visible and give rise to adaptation of organisational structures and work forms, some of which may outlast the crises.

Keywords: Crisis management, Covid-19, Organizational learning, Adaptive capacities, Cross sectoral collaboration.