জাতীয় উন্নয়ন প্রশাসন একাডেমি (নাডা)

Author : G. M. Sharfaraz

Abstract:

Coordination is widely perceived as an essential function of crisis management in the public sector. However, the pre-pandemic public health policies of Bangladesh lacked a well-defined blueprint for intra and inter-organisational coordination, creating a void that the government had to fill as the pandemic unfolded. This situation served as an ultimate stress test for the country’s political and administrative leadership, as well as for its societal and institutional resilience. In the past two decades, Bangladesh has confronted more than thirty epidemic outbreaks of various magnitudes, which stretch healthcare organisations to the limit, rendering standard operating procedures inapplicable and severely testing professional norms. Therefore, considering the context, this study focuses on analysing the factors influencing the crisis response mechanism of the health sector in Bangladesh during the pandemic in order to identify gaps in existing frameworks. The research has applied qualitative method to probe the research objective and questions. Data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with key informants at the strategic level of health, administration, and non-government sectors. The findings indicated that trust-based informal coordination, supplemented by a hybrid approach with a shadow hierarchical mechanism, played a significant role in tackling the crisis at the periphery level, whereas the role conflict, fragmentation and duplication marred central level operation. This study has suggested a coordination framework for managing upcoming crises of this kind, providing an additional and modest contribution to the current national crisis management framework, specifically addressing the challenges encountered by the health sector in Bangladesh during the pandemic.

Keywords: Crisis management, Collaboration, Coordination, Pandemic, Capacity, Public Sector