How companies improvised through COVID shows which changes will stick around
A new study of how organizations scrambled to adapt during the pandemic reveals that temporary fixes are becoming permanent business practices. The research identifies three distinct improvisation patterns—from ramping up operations to shutting them down—offering leaders a framework to understand which emergency measures are worth keeping.
Originaltitel: Scaling up and scaling down: Improvisational handling of critical work practices during the COVID-19 pandemic
<p>The aim of this article is to explore improvisational handling of critical work practices during the COVID-19 pandemic and interpret these practices from a learning perspective. Based on an interview study with representatives of private, public and intermediary organisations, the study identified three different types of improvisational handling as responses to the pandemic crisis involving ‘scaling up’ and ‘scaling down’ critical work practices. By ‘scaling up’ and ‘scaling down’, we refer to practices for which, due to the pandemic, it has been imperative to urgently scale up an existing operational process or develop a new process, and alternatively extensively scale down or cease an existing process. The types of improvisational handling differed depending on the discretion of involved actors in terms of the extent to which the tasks, methods and/or results were given beforehand. These types of improvisational handling resulted in temporary solutions that may become permanent after the pandemic. The framework and model proposed in the article can be used as a tool to analyse and learn from the changes in work practices that have been set in motion during the pandemic. Such learning may improve the ability to cope with future extensive crises and other rapid change situations.</p>