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This dissertation delineates two fundamental tensions that public administrations face in the crisis environment: the tension between bureaucratic vs adaptive crisis management practices and the tension between internal effectiveness and external legitimacy. During a crisis response, public administrations must decide whether to adhere to bureaucratic procedures or to move away from routine managerial activity and instead switch to riskier but promising courses of action, such as adaptation and flexibility. The first empirical paper of the dissertation conceptualizes and operationalizes organizational flexibility in crisis management and theorizes on explanatory factors for the variation in flexibility between agencies. However, while bureaucratic routines and procedures may impair the effectiveness of crisis management, they are also associated with critical features of legitimacy. Consequently, changes in administrative routines during the crisis response likely affect how legitimate the public perceives the crisis management process. Paper two and three examine the effects of crisis management practices on external perceptions. Paper two scrutinizes three prominent crisis management dilemmas regarding flexibility, inclusion, and resource redistribution and how citizens evaluate the different management alternatives regarding their legitimacy. In Paper three, the focus is moved to the legitimacy perceptions of volunteers, who interacted with local administrations during the crisis management process and have gained direct insight into the practices. published |
