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Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership: Thirteen crisis ready strategies for COVID-19

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  • Jamie K. Wardman

Abstract

Good leadership is widely regarded as a crucial component of risk and crisis management and remains an enduring theme of more than 40 years of inquiry into emergencies, disasters, and controversies. Today, the question of good leadership has come under the spotlight again as a key factor shaping how successfully nations have dealt with the COVID-19 global health crisis. Amidst plummeting levels of public trust, the worst recession of the G7, and the highest death toll in Europe, the UK’s pandemic leadership response has faced especially stern accusations of incompetence and culpability for what has been described as the most catastrophic science policy failure for a generation. Addressing these issues, this paper argues for the adoption of a more pluralised UK leadership approach for handling COVID-19. Particularly, it is contended that as COVID-19 is a multifaceted problem that presents many varied and distributed challenges, UK leadership should employ a differentiated range of strategic mechanisms and processes to help improve substantive understandings and decision-making, support collective resilience, and build adaptive capacities as the crisis continues. The paper accordingly identifies and elaborates thirteen strategies, drawing on lessons and insights from the risk and crisis management field, that are proposed to serve as a useful heuristic to help guide UK pandemic leadership in this endeavour. To illustrate the value and application of each strategy, examples are provided of noteworthy leadership responses to COVID-19 observed internationally thus far, as well as leadership problems that have hampered the UK’s pandemic response. In conclusion, it is suggested that in as far as the conduct expected of leaders during a pandemic, or any other crisis, should maintain and be reflective of democratic values and standards of legitimacy, these strategies may also provide broadly applicable normative criteria against which leadership performance in handling COVID-19 may be judged as crisis ready.

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  • Jamie K. Wardman, 2020. "Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership: Thirteen crisis ready strategies for COVID-19," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(7-8), pages 1092-1120, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:23:y:2020:i:7-8:p:1092-1120
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2020.1842989
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    Cited by:

    1. Piotr Korneta & Grzegorz Kunikowski & Magdalena Chmiel, 2021. "Conversion of Sars-Cov-2 Threats into Business Opportunities by Polish Outpatient Clinics," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 4), pages 893-910.
    2. Sharon Lamb & Marta Pagán-Ortiz & Sara Bonilla, 2021. "How to Provide Sexual Education: Lessons from a Pandemic on Masculinity, Individualism, and the Neoliberal Agenda," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-15, April.
    3. Titik Setyaningsih & Indra Bastian & Choirunnisa Arifa & Fuad Rakhman, 2023. "Pandemic Leadership: Is It Just a Matter of Good and Bad?," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 605-621, June.
    4. Martin Flegl & Hazael Cerón-Monroy & Igor Krejčí & Josef Jablonský, 2023. "Estimating the hospitality efficiency in Mexico using Data Envelopment Analysis," OPSEARCH, Springer;Operational Research Society of India, vol. 60(1), pages 188-216, March.
    5. Eltigani Ahmed & James Kilika & Clare Gekenia, 2022. "Strategy-induced organisational resilience through dynamic resource orchestration: Perspectives of former Kenyan bankers," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 11(2), pages 92-103, March.
    6. Piotr Korneta & Magda Chmiel, 2022. "Medical Staff Shortages and the Performance of Outpatient Clinics in Poland during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-16, November.

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