This article is an example of "Lessons from the Field." In early 2021, a call to action resulted in an unprecedented surge of volunteers for Utah's public health system. This call to action was in support of the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine across the state and the need to vaccinate the population as quickly and efficiently as possible. In this case study, we describe the events that preceded the surge of volunteers as well as challenges and resolutions to volunteer onboarding. Additionally, we discuss the importance of collaboration between local health departments and the Utah Department of Health and Human Services and describe how the partnership was strengthened by this specific emergency response.

Based on early evidence, risk communication scholars have come to believe that longer (360-character maximum) mobile public warning messages generate more compliance than shorter (90-character maximum) messages. This study used an experimental design to test that premise. The study measured participants' ( = 481) likelihood of compliance in response to a mock Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) message, as well as alternatives to immediate compliance: seeking additional information, taking non-recommended action, or ignoring the message. The study found that both longer and shorter messages generated relatively high levels of compliance, but longer messages did not generate higher levels of compliance. Rather than message length, risk personalization and hazard experience were stronger differentiators of WEA message response outcomes. Results included a moderation effect: Shorter messages produced slightly compliance than longer messages among people who reported lower levels of risk personalization. The study concluded that 90-character messages may be more effective than previously believed. Consequently, the authors recommend renewed focus on public safety communication related to risk personalization and hazard experience. (169 words).

Recent research has shown that multiagency emergency response is beset by a range of challenges, calling for a greater understanding of the way in which these teams work together to improve future multiagency working. Social psychological research shows that a shared identity within a group can improve the way in which that group works together and can facilitate effective outcomes. In the present study, 52 semistructured interviews were conducted with 17 strategic and/or tactical responders during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the possible role of shared identity in the multiagency response to COVID-19 and whether this was linked to factors that facilitated or challenged interoperability. Findings show evidence of a shared identity at a horizontal intergroup level among responders locally. However, there was limited evidence for a shared identity at the vertical intergroup level between local and national responders. Three key factors linked to shared identity appeared to contribute to effective multiagency working. First, pre-existing relationships with other responders facilitated the ease with which responders were able to work together initially. Second, a sense of 'common fate' helped bring responders together, and finally, group leaders were able to strategically reinforce a sense of shared identity within the group.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) health crisis imposes severe pressures on nonprofit organizations, which must be resilient to respond effectively to extreme environmental tensions. We combined resource dependence theory with stakeholder theory to frame to what extent nonprofits experienced resource pressures through various stakeholder channels and the nonprofit governance responses. We empirically investigated international medical research and education nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate resource decreases in nearly all stakeholder channels. In response, nonprofit boards increased activity levels by mainly focusing on adapting organizational offerings and increasing support to the organization. Managerial executives also increased their activity levels, by focusing on safeguarding financial stability, planning and adapting operations to confinement measures.

The aim of this paper is to analyze COVID-19 crisis management from the perspective of organizational resilience. An empirical study was conducted from April to June 2020 in one French hospital in Paris. The study focused on the organizational changes implied by the 'all COVID-19 strategy', the success factors facilitating the organizational resilience, and the difficulty factors. We show that organizational resilience in this case was based on a link between the anticipation and adaptation processes. This capacity for resilience can also be organized using an original structure that connects strategic decisions with the reality on the ground, takes account of the demands and constraints of operational actors, and offers them the necessary support. The description and analysis of real work carried out by operational actors illustrates the contribution made by expertize to organizational resilience, and the social dynamics of the adaptation process. Finally, the emotional aspects, rarely featured in the literature, are highlighted as an intrinsic element of a crisis. The results will provide evidence to help better understand crisis management and feedback to strengthen the management of future crises.

Crises have the potential to heighten stress levels among frontline employees. In general, to cope with crisis-related stress, employees often improvise or job craft to meet the demands of the crisis. In addition to this, they need resources and directions to support their innovation by lowering role conflict. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses too were compelled to improvise as they struggled with multiple challenges related to the uncertainty associated with the virus and the assignment of atypical job functions. These concerns affected nurses' wellbeing and impacted their jobs. This two-phase sequential study began with interviews ( = 14), followed by a survey ( = 152) exploring nurses' perspectives regarding this noncausality crisis and the impact of organizational variables on their stress levels. While improvisation and job crafting were found to be important for adaptive resilience, the process involved in achieving resilience ended up increasing stress for nurses. Additionally, nurses faced role conflict, which contributed to greater levels of stress. To support nurses and enhance resilience, organizations should provide resources, role direction and training for effective job crafting and orientation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought overwhelming challenges to developing countries which are already resource-constrained and lack adequate social safety nets. Specifically, lockdown has adversely impacted marginalized communities (e.g., labourer, fish wholesaler and small business owner) and informal sector employees who rely on meager daily wages for their survival. Set in the contested climate of the emergency response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Phulbari, Dinajpur, Bangladesh, we examine the early response of the community to the pandemic. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews with members of this community, we find that the existing central and regional government structure has failed to deal with the crisis. Yet, we show how collective effort at the local community level, led by volunteers and community leaders, is crucial in the fight against hardship during lockdown.

Modern societies are facing an increasing number of transboundary systemic threats. The sudden spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has once again highlighted concerns about governments' capacity to deal with disruptions and stressed the need for more resilient governance arrangements. Besides the usual policymaking, the latter might emerge from decisions, made during the crisis management as well. Building on ideas of the new institutionalism, more specifically, the normative logic of appropriateness and the rational logic of consequentiality, we examine how different mechanisms in varying contexts lead to different types of resilience building. Based on the results of pattern matching applied to the Lithuanian case of COVID-19 crisis management in 2020, we argue that in environments where the logic of consequentiality was dominant, resilience was mostly strengthened because of major breakthroughs, stemming from coercive pressures as well as top-down policy action from the centre of government. In contrast, more incremental developments contributed to resilience building through normative or mimetic pressures, professionalization, network-based and bottom-up practices in environments, where the logic of appropriateness prevailed. We claim that, while the logic of consequentiality helps to strengthen resilience in the context of turbulence, the logic of appropriateness is especially important for ensuring its sustainability.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and drawing on literature from change management, internal communication and cognitive appraisal theory, this study provided accounts of how transparent communication during organizational change affects employees' cognitive appraisals of the change, behavioural reactions to the change, and subsequently, turnover intentions. Our findings of 414 full-time US employees revealed that transparent internal communication is positively related to employees' challenge appraisal of the change, which, in turn, is related to change compliance and championing. In addition, transparent communication is negatively associated with threat appraisal of the change, which in turn is connected to lower change compliance. Further, employees' turnover intention was negatively associated with their compliance and championing for the change. This study has made several contributions to internal communication scholarship, appraisal theory and change management literature. We also offer several suggestions to improve communication during organizational change periods.

Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum's (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. We undertook 19 semistructured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between March 25, 2020 and February 17, 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. Within these interviews, we focused on their strategic level decision-making and how their relationship with national government impacted on local processes and outcomes. Using a form of grounded theory, our data describe the chronological evolution of an increasingly effective localized approach toward outbreak control and a growing resilience in dealing with concurrent emergency incidents. However, we also highlight how national government organizations imposed central control on aspects of the response in ways that undermined or misaligned with local preparedness. Thus, during emergencies, central governments can undermine the principle of subsidiarity and damage the ways in which LRFs can help scaffold local resilience. Our work contributes to the theoretical understanding of the social psychological factors that can shape the behaviour of responder agencies during a prolonged crisis. In particular, the implications of our analysis for advancing our conceptual understanding of strategic decision-making during emergencies are discussed.

The needs of volunteer community service providers (VCSPs), who are the main responders to community crises, have received significantly less attention for the contributions they have been making during the COVID-19 crisis. A mixed-method research framework was used in this study, which involved semi-structured interviews with 13 NGOs and questionnaire responses from 430 VCSPs in Hubei, China to assess the VCSPs' personal needs based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It was found that the VCSPs had safety, love, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization personal needs, all of which were closely related to family, partners, organizations, society and the government. The discussions revealed that the more experienced VCSPs needed special attention and family support was extremely significant for VCSPs in crisis. Several recommendations to meet VCSPs' personal needs are proposed that could have valuable reference value for emergency managers when organizing and supporting VCSPs in contingencies.

This article draws attention to the social context and working methods in crisis management. Based on 1000 interviews with business leaders in Swedish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we analyze crisis management in practice and ask: What social contexts do business leaders use in crisis management, and what working methods do they rely on? Most companies in this study do not have any form of crisis group; rather, they deal with issues reactively as they occur. Few of the companies work continuously with a crisis plan and only slightly more than half of those that have crisis plans report that it has been helpful in dealing with the COVID-19 situation. The study concludes that Swedish SMEs seem reliant upon a process that has an emerging nature whereby decisions are largely based on gut feeling. However, the companies in our sample that experienced a significant revenue decline due to the COVID-19 situation report that they employ a more centralized and deductive approach with reports and documents as a basis for their work. The study contributes to a developed understanding of how crisis management works in practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed the proliferation of a plethora of (mis)information on various media platforms and inconsistent crisis instructions from different sources. People consume crisis information from multiple channels and sources to better understand the situation and fact-check COVID-19 information. This study elucidates how Americans determine their preventive behaviours based on their information seeking and verifying behaviours during the pandemic. Our results were based on a US nationally representative sample ( = 856), and showed that proactive preventive behaviours (e.g., washing hands frequently) were positively affected by information-seeking through interpersonal channels, news media, and the government, whereas avoidance preventive behaviours (e.g., avoiding social gatherings) were only positively affected by information-seeking through news media. Crisis information verifying had positive effects on all types of preventive behaviours. Crisis managers are recommended to reach out to the public using appropriate channels and sources and facilitate individual's ability and motivation in verifying pandemic information.

Officials worldwide have sought ways to effectively use mobile technology to communicate health information to help thwart the spread of Covid-19. This study offers a preliminary exploration of whether state-level ( = 6) and local-level ( = 53) wireless emergency alert (WEA) messages might contribute to impeding the spread of Covid-19 in the United States. The study compares changes in reported rates of infections and deaths between states and localities that issued WEA messages in March and April of 2020 with states that did not. Small sample sizes and differences in the rates of Covid-19 spread prohibit robust statistical analysis and detection of clear effect sizes, but estimated effects are generally in the right direction. Combining statistical analysis with preliminary categorization of both WEA message content and social media themes suggests that a positive effect from WEA messages cannot be ruled out.

The current study addresses the communication aspect of risk governance during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining whether governors' tweets differ by political party, gender and crisis phase. Drawing on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Crisis Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model and framing literature, we examined the salience of five CERC's communication objectives, namely acknowledge crisis with empathy, promote protective actions, describe preparedness/response efforts, address rumours and misunderstanding and segment audience. Using a deductive and inductive approach, we analysed 7000 Twitter messages sent by the 50 US state governors during the period of 13 March 2020 to 17 August 2020. Our findings suggest that governors' tweets aligned with CERC's communication objectives to a varying degree. We found main and interaction effects of political party, gender and crisis phase on governors' communication objectives. New emergent communication objectives included attention to mental health, call for social influencers and promoting hope. Implications are discussed.

This essay argues for the importance of error as an organizing concept in the management of hazardous technical systems to high levels of reliability and safety. The concept of "error" has been essential to the development of high reliability organizations (HROs). As practiced in HROs, error management has also been an important strategy for the management of uncertainty. "Uncertainty" has been conceived by some analysts as a condition that can convey little or no reliable information about its own boundary conditions or its specific threat to the operation of complex systems. The argument here is that uncertainty is differentiated and specified in HROs and provides important information in relation to error. Uncertainty does not, in the special context of HROs, end the possibility and practice of reliable management. In fact, error in HROs can be a starting point for the further analysis of ways in which uncertainty itself can be managed reliably. But the argument offered here does not mean that uncertainty does not challenge reliability in other settings. The COVID-19 pandemic is offered as an example of how uncertainties may invalidate even the application of "reliability" as a performance standard in certain domains of management and policy.

The literature on crisis management reports that crises can be critical for organizations, including state and extra-state actors; they either break down or reinvent themselves. Successful organizations, those that do not break down, use situations of crisis to restructure themselves and improve their performance. Applicable to all crises, this reasoning is also valid for the COVID-19 pandemic and for government organizations in China. Drawing on documentary analysis, this article examines China's pandemic response from the social-political, technological and psychological perspectives using a holistic crisis management framework. It demonstrates that the Chinese state bureaucracy has assembled, expanded and strengthened its surveillance strategies to strive for comprehensive crisis response.

This paper inquires how surveillance manifests in least-ideal contexts (LICs), that is, countries with resource constraints, poor governance and proclivity for populism during COVID-19, and its implications for crisis governance. Using the Philippines as a case, we advance three arguments. First, LICs can become spaces where inappropriate surveillance is undertaken. Second, liminal surveillance practices can become permanent policy fixtures in LICs. Finally, when a prevailing crisis approach of a government is perceived to be inconsistent with the needs of the public, it can lead to a self-help system among various societal groups and actors. This self-help system may not necessarily be aligned with the general direction of the national government. As a result, it can perpetuate a disjointed and maladaptive crisis governance approach, where main actors like national governments, and complementary actors like private sector firms, local government units and citizen organizations pursue goals independent of one another.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a range of technological as well as legislative measures were introduced to monitor, track and prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus across the world. The measures taken by governments across the world have relied upon the use of geoinformation from satellites, drones, online dashboards and contact tracing apps to render the virus more visible, which has been instrumental in two ways. First, geoinformation has been helpful in organizing efforts for capacity building, in mapping communities living in deprived urban areas (referred to commonly as 'slums') and their response to COVID-19 measures. These efforts have been part of initiatives by the United Nations as well as NGOs, using geoinformation to inform urban policymaking by representing the social, political and environmental issues facing those living in deprived urban areas. And secondly, geoinformation has also been used to control the spread of the pandemic by monitoring and limiting the behaviour of citizens through various technologies. This form of geoinformation-driven governmentality, I will contend from critical geography and surveillance studies perspective endangers ethical values such as trust and solidarity, agency, transparency along with the rights and values of citizens.

In this special issue, we reflect on the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis and the containment measures put in place by formal authorities, combining both theoretically and empirically three different fields of study: crisis management, surveillance studies, and digital ethics. The special issue shows how the intersection of these fields provides a great opportunity to better understand challenges that are of critical importance to today's societies, as well as opening up new avenues for innovation. The focus of this special issue is to unpack and understand the debate on crisis management measures, surveillance, and ethical consequences during the ongoing, enduring COVID-19 crisis. Building on crisis management literature, surveillance studies, and digital ethics research the articles included in this special issue reflect on issues of governance, space, as well as moral and ethical considerations, which were often overlooked in the public discourse in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The special issue provides a deeper and clearer understanding of intended and unintended ethical and political consequences of crisis management practices, such as a politics of visibility that makes the operation of power invisible and fails to combat inequality, whilst ignoring the potential positive power of digital data and surveillance for empowerment and resilience.