COVID‐19 induced emergent knowledge strategies

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1656
AuthorRuxandra Bejinaru,Constantin Bratianu
Date01 January 2021
Published date01 January 2021
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
COVID-19 induced emergent knowledge strategies
Constantin Bratianu
1
| Ruxandra Bejinaru
2
1
UNESCO Department for Business
Administration, University of Economic
Studies, Bucharest, Romania
2
Department of Management, Business
Administration and Tourism, Stefan cel Mare
University of Suceava, Suceava, Romania
Correspondence
Constantin Bratianu, UNESCO Department for
Business Administration, University of
Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania.
Email: constantin.bratianu@gmail.com
The pandemic of COVID-19 is considered the most complex global process gener-
ated so far due to its unprecedented power of disruption, interconnection, and lock-
downs in all the domains of our life, from health to economy, education, research,
culture, sports, and social isolation. The COVID-19 crisis came like any other natural
disaster, finding people and organizations unprepared for disruptive power and social
nexus. The unthinkable became a reality, and people realized that organizations and
governments have no strategies to fight against such a pandemic. They found out
that the strategic knowledge gap is enormous, and the only way to navigate this crisis
is to create emergent knowledge strategies. This paper aims to analyze the character-
istics of emergent knowledge strategies by comparing them with deliberate knowl-
edge strategies and showing how people can develop such new kinds of strategies.
The analysis is based on criteria like time perception, systems thinking, type of
knowledge, type of changes, and complexity.
1|INTRODUCTION
Emergent contagious diseases such as avian influenza, MERS, SARS,
and Ebola produced many deaths and showed the power of an epi-
demic in many countries worldwide. However, the novel coronavirus
pneumonia (COVID-19) that started in December 2019 in Wuhan,
Hubei Province of China, made many more victims and spread world-
wide (Peeri et al., 2020; Solnit, 2020; Wang, Cheng, Yue, &
McAleer, 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO) announced a
COVID-19 pandemic on March 12, 2020, when 125,600 confirmed
cases were reported from 118 countries and regions from all over the
world. In the Situation Report No. 177 published on July 15, 2020,
WHO announced that the total number of confirmed cases increased
dramatically to 13,150,645, the total number confirmed new cases
was 185,836, the total number of deaths was 574,464, and the total
new deaths were 4,176 (World Health Organization, 2020). All this is
due to the highly contagious nature of the virus, and the inexorable
implications of its explosive spread during the acceleration phase
(Baldwin & Weder di Mauro, 2020, p. 1). Its transmission dynamics is
fast and generates an evolution very close to an exponential curve. In
China, statistics show that the average incubation period was
5.2 days, and the number of people infected doubled every 7.4 days.
Each sick person may infect 2.23.8 people on average (Zhou, 2020,
p. 35). That is leading to a geometric progression curve that may reach
a peak when the capacity of the health system becomes insufficient
for treating the huge number of infected people with the virus. The
epidemiologic curve may rich an exponential peak if there are no mea-
sures for containment, and the contagious chain explodes in high-
density population communities.
The fast progression o f COVID-19 determined WHO to recom-
mend governments to take dras tic measures for slowing down t he
propagation of the diseas e and flattening the epid emiology curve
down to the treatment capacity of the health system in each country
(Gourinchas, 2020). But the health system is only a component of a
larger system of systems i n each country, and it influences the func-
tioning of all the other syste ms. The immediate effects were seen in
the economy. Efforts to flatten the epi curve reduce economic
activity. The recessi on, so to speak, is a necessary public health mea -
sure. Keeping workers away fr om work and consumers away fr om
consumption both reduce eco nomic activity(Baldwin & Weder di
Mauro, 2020, p.8). In many countries, governments declared emer-
gency stateand issued r egulations with dras tic measures for busi-
ness, education, cult ure, sports, and people . For instance, in many
countries, hotels, rest aurants, hypermarkets, s chools, universitie s,
theatres, churches, an d stadiums were closed down. There were c re-
ated special rules for so cial distancing for com munities and people,
avoiding meetings in gr oups, wearing masks and gl oves in public
places, and isolation at home (Hasanat et al., 2020; Reeves, Lang, &
Received: 18 July 2020 Revised: 4 October 2020 Accepted: 16 November 2020
DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1656
Knowl Process Manag. 2021;28:1117. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 11

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