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Leadership principles with Administrative approaches to COVID-19

I am reviewing the case written in 2020 entitled “Fighting COVID-19 Through Government Initiatives and Collaborative Governance: The Taiwan Experience”. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on , Taiwan has been hailed as a success story. Although COVID-19 outbreak occurred early one would have expected  high morbidity and mortality in Taiwan due to its close proximity to the origin of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. As the author (Huang 2020) notes, “citizens are willing to help one another and trust each other in order to maintain a safe and healthy society”. Along these lines (Fischer 2010) describes a situation where leaders have a dual role of getting the job done and caring for people (p44).

Taiwan is a parliamentary republic consisting of six special municipalities, three autonomous municipalities and thirteen counties. If we compare these units of local government we see the United States have individual large municipalities such as the major cities New York, Houston, Chicago etc.however absent in Taiwan are states and the provinces have been resolved in the interest of efficiency.(ref) Just as the United States struggles with federalism and the role of the state governments versus the federal government particularly in the pandemic, Taiwan is arranged differently with an elected president and a prime minister who is appointed by the president. (Ref) As the United States has grown in complexity and the burdens of government continue to grow, the inability or unwillingness of the federal government to bear the problems remains manifest. (Dertwich p461) in Shafritz and Hyde 2017). The contingency and covenant theories (Fischer 2010) p46  are demonstrated by Taiwan in sharp contrast to the United States. Unlike the United States the central government is solely responsible for policy formation and the local governments for implementation. Thus a covenant relationship exists between the central government and local governments in Taiwan. At the very outbreak of the disease contingency teams were organized by the leadership as described by covenant and contingency theories (Fischer (2010).

As the disease spread the Central Epidemic Command Center was instituted with the Taiwan CDC head as the Chief Commander. When confirmed cases were reported in communities the Minister of Health and Welfare was appointed as the Chief Commander. Finally, as COVID-19 began to spread in the Community the Central Epidemic Command Center appointed the prime minister as the Chief Commander. The leaders were transformational in that they looked beyond their own self interest and focused on the goals of the organization ( Fischer 2010) p48.

The author Huang describes mutual trust and cooperation as a hallmark of the Taiwanese people. In this way the Taiwan governmental institutions and the people through volunteerism have demonstrated what ( Fischer 2010) describes as self leadership (p52). Whether or not the leader is present the “war on COVID-19” remains a priority through cooperation with both the general public volunteering to delivering food to those quarantined  and non-governmental organizations such as the Taiwan Pharmacy Association coordinating supply and distributions of masks. This type of leadership substitute has no doubt contributed to the success of Taiwan in battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

There seems to be little in the way of Taiwan having a problem with receiving an order from a superior or a leader and taking responsibility for carrying out those orders to the best of their ability. (Parker-Follet chapter 12 in  Shafritz and Hyde 2017 pp 76-83)
The flexibility and success reflects the fact that the leadership structure was that of an Incident Command System ICS with high levels of trust and mutual cooperation [hesed] ( Fischer 2010) and clear lines of authority due to strong mutual trust and a positive prior working relationship (Moynahan 2009). The Taiwanese had prior experience with the similar crisis of the 2003 SARS outbreak. 

Nowell and Steelman (2015) have found that communication is most effective through different  governmental organizations when the stakeholders who are embedded ( in the case of Taiwan the CECC) and have similar roles as with previous experience in this case the SARS 2003 outbreak.

The constitution of Taiwan was instituted in 1947 and for forty years the country was under Marshall law. Since then the government has undergone major reforms at least seven times to this date. For example it has done away with the Provences as political entities to make the government more relevant to the country’s current situation. (taiwan.gov.tw)

Undoubtedly there were many statesman responsible for leading the nation during the overhauls the likes of which would be statesmen such as Madison for preserving the states (Ruderman 2012) for his legislative and executive statesmanship, Taft for his federal judicial statesmanship (Burns 2018), and Lincoln in preserving the union by instituting Marshall law and suspending habeas corpus (Ruderman 2012) and Franklin for his classic statesmanship and the individual virtues of self discipline moderation and a sense of justice (Baldwin 2012).

In short, no matter what form of democratic government there are universal consistencies that true statesman exhibit in improving their governments and their abilities to respond to major crises

References

Baldwin,C.E. Franklins Classical American Statesmanship (2012)
Perspctives in Political Science 41(2) pp67-74 DOI-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1080/10457097.2012.660446

Burns, K.J. Chief Justice as Chief Executive: Taft’s Judicial Statesmanship Journal of Supreme Court History DOI-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1111/jsch 12165

Derthick,M. ( 1987) American Federalism: Madisons Middle Ground in the 1980s Public Administrative Review 47(1) pp67-74 American Society for Public Administration 

Fischer, K. “ A Biblical-Covenantal Perspective on Organizational Behavior and Leadership Faculty Publications and Presentations. 523 https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_pubs/52…

Huang, I.Y. (2020) Fighting COVID-19 through Government Initiatives and Collaborative Governance: The Taiwan Experience. Public Administrative Review 80 (4) pp665-670 The American Society for Public Administration DOI: 10.1111/puar 13239

Moynihan, D.P. (2020) The Network Governance of Crisis Response: Case Studies of Incident Command Systems.  Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 19(4) pp895-915 DOI: 10.1093/jopart/mun033

Nowell, B., Steelman, T. (2015) Communication under Fire: The Role of Embeddedness in the Emergence and Efficacy fo Disaster Response Communication Networks Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 25(3) pp929-952, DOI.org/10.1093/iopart/muuo21 

Ruderman,R.S. Statesmanship Reconsidered (2012) Perspectives on Political Science 41(2) pp 86-89 DOI-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1080/10457097.2012.660841

Shafritz,J Hyde,A. Chapt 12 The Giving of Orders From Scientific Foundations of Buisness Administration (1926) Williams and Wilkins retreived from Classics of Public Administration (2017) Cengage Learning pp 76-83