THREE COUNTRIES, ONE PANDEMIC: FRANCE, BRAZIL,
AND PORTUGAL FACING COVID-19

OMARI HARAKE Oumaima (Laboratoire CEREGE – Université de Poitiers) -HARAKE Mohamad Fadl (Laboratoire CEREGE (Chercheur associé) – Université de Poitiers,
GBSB Global Business School (Malte / Espagne)) – TORRES SILVA JUNIOR Jeova (Laboratoire CEREGE – Université de Poitiers – IAE de Poitiers)

Background and aims of the symposium

The Covid-19 pandemic constituted a critical event in the field of crisis studies namely, a rupture that put under strain the ordinary capacities of public organizations to decide, coordinate, and act (Boin, ’t Hart, Stern, & Sundelius, 2016).

Beyond the health emergency, the crisis operated as an organizational “analyzer”, revealing structural vulnerabilities (hospital capacity, primary care-hospital coordination, availability of human resources, logistics, multi-level governance), while also acting as an accelerator of transformations (digitalization, indicator-based steering, surveillance arrangements, and new forms of inter-organizational cooperation). In this context, national responses cannot be understood solely through the lens of policy “measures” (lockdowns, vaccination, testing). They must instead be approached as governance configurations articulated around:

• Politico-administrative trade-offs (centralization/decentralization, the role of health
  authorities, the place of expertise);
• Public policy instruments (rules, schemes, incentives, standards);
• Management tools (indicators, dashboards, information systems, reporting procedures) that structure and frame the crisis and render it “governable” through data and routines (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007; Hood, 1983).

A major contemporary issue concerns precisely the growing prominence of data-driven steering and a “performance/traceability” rationality in health, which intensified during Covid (accelerated circulation of indicators, daily reporting, public infographics, capacity monitoring, etc.).

This dynamic is part of broader processes of quantification and governing by numbers, in which the production of figures is not neutral: it selects problems, ranks priorities, redistributes responsibilities, and shapes the legitimacy of public action (Desrosières, 1998; Porter, 1995).

In crisis situations, these instruments become both resources (coordination, visibility, anticipation) and sources of tension (reliability, temporality, ranking effects, public controversies, and pressures on organizations and professionals).

Moreover, the literature on the appropriation of management tools emphasizes that such pools are not mechanically “applied”: they are translated, reinterpreted, and sometimes circumvented, depending on actor dynamics, professional logics, available resources, and institutional constraints (de Vaujany, 2006).

The Covid crisis thus generated not only a proliferation of instruments (protocols, procedures, dashboards, digital devices), but also local arrangements and organizational innovations often invisible in macro-level narratives (ad hoc territorial coordination, inter-hospital cooperation, role recomposition, logistical improvisations).
Understanding the crisis therefore requires holding together the institutional (governance, doctrines, norms) and the micro-organizational (practices, adjustments, learning).

Finally, the comparison France-Brazil-Portugal has a specific scholarly value: it enables analysis of how distinct health systems and politico-administrative architectures faced the same ordeal, and how factors such as federal or unitary structures, institutional capacities, socio-territorial inequalities, public controversies, and trust in authorities shaped crisis-management trajectories.

In this respect, the notion of resilience can be mobilized both as a framework for reading adaptive and continuity capacities and as a critical question: resilience of what, for whom, at what cost, and at the price of which transformations of organizations and work (Hollnagel, Woods, & Leveson, 2006). The symposium thus aims to provide an interdisciplinary scholarly space to :

• Objectify the modes of crisis governance (and their effects);
• Analyze the instruments and tools mobilized (their rationalities, uses, and performative effects);
• Examine coordination mechanisms and organizational innovations;
• Investigate the conditions for collective learning (after-action reviews/RETEX) beyond the emergency phase, and the transferability of lessons across countries and territories, taking institutional contexts into account.

Scientific objectives of the Call for Papers

This Call for Papers seeks contributions that analyze the Covid-19 crisis as a moment of reconfiguration of public action in health, in which decision-making and legitimation under uncertainty, policy instrumentation (rules, schemes, standards), managerial toolsets (indicators, dashboards, information systems, procedures), and organizational dynamics (coordination, work, learning, innovation) are intertwined.
The objective is to document not only policy “responses” (measures), but above all their production mechanisms, performative effects, and local appropriations (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007; de Vaujany, 2006).

Expected papers may, in particular:

• Shed light on data-based governing and the effects of quantification in crisis steering (Porter, 1995; Desrosières, 1998);
• Analyze resilience capacities (continuity/adaptation) and their organizational
  conditions (Hollnagel et al., 2006);
• Discuss, based on empirical settings, how actors cope with sometimes contradictory injunctions (speed vs. reliability; centralization vs. autonomy; public health vs. continuity of care).

Thematic tracks

Submissions may fit within one or several tracks, privileging an explicit problematization (research question, hypotheses, or theoretical proposition) and careful attention to the organizational effects of choices in instrumentation.

Track 1: Crisis governance, legitimacy, and trade-offs

• Public decision-making under uncertainty, crisis temporalities, controversy
  management.
• Centralization/decentralization and multi-level coordination (state–territories / federal–local).
• The role of communication arrangements and expertise in legitimizing action (Boin et al., 2016).

Track 2: Public policy instruments and management tools

• Indicators, dashboards, reporting, surveillance arrangements, and the production of “governable realities”.
• Effects of instruments on prioritization, accountability, and responsibility (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007; Hood, 1983).
• Data quality, interoperability, tensions between steering and frontline practices.

Track 3: Appropriation, uses, resistance, and translation of tools

• Situated appropriation of tools: reinterpretations, detours, resistance, bricolage.
• Effects on work, professions, boundaries, and interprofessional cooperation (de Vaujany, 2006).

Track 4: Coordination, cooperation, and organizational innovations

• Inter-hospital cooperation, primary care-hospital coordination, crisis logistics.
• Public-private partnerships, hybrid arrangements, the role of associations and networks.

Track 5: After-action reviews (RETEX), learning, and institutionalization

• RETEX arrangements: methods, actors, and the “politicization” of learning.
• What stabilizes (or not) in rules, routines, and organizational capacities after the crisis.

Track 6: Resilience, inequalities, and relations with citizens

• Organizational resilience and the “cost” of adaptations (Hollnagel et al., 2006).
• Socio-territorial inequalities, acceptability, trust, and ethical tensions.

4. Expected types of contributions

Two formats are encouraged:

❖ Research paper

• Research question, theoretical framework, methodology, results, and discussion.
• Comparative contributions are particularly welcome (France/Brazil/Portugal or subnational comparisons).

❖ Problematized return of experience (RETEX)

• Describe a device/organization/coordination mechanism implemented during the
  crisis.
• Identify issues, constraints, trade-offs, and success/failure factors.
• Propose operational lessons and their conditions of transferability.