Collaborative Governance of Public Health: A Cultural and Ethical Perspective on Predicting Citizens' Trust in Public Health Services During Medical Emergencies

Over the years, citizens' expectations of the healthcare sector have increased, especially after the sudden outbreak of COVID-19. Additionally, citizens are becoming more conscious of having a healthier lifestyle based on several environmental and economic issues prevailing worldwide. Hence, empirically testing the predictors of providing excellent public healthcare services and enhancing the resultant citizens' trust in such services is of utmost significance. Simultaneously, the critical role of healthcare workers' capacity in providing quality services to patients in public health institutions and improving healthcare services to develop citizens' trust needs has been considered in this study. Based on a quantitative survey, the current study collected data from 460 individuals regarding three collaborative governance practices and resultant improved public healthcare services. The results revealed the significance of all three collaborative governance of public health practices. Citizen participation was the most impactful, followed by democratic accountability and procedural legitimacy. The study results are valuable to practitioners, policymakers, healthcare service providers, and governments. Among the recommendations are that collaborative governance practices should be developed, the healthcare system should be decentralized to provide the best services to citizens, and public healthcare workers' capabilities should be improved by providing proper training. © 2023, Florida Gulf Coast University. All rights reserved.

Mancunian Chinese Diaspora Organisations' Response to Covid-19 – Studying the Societal Actors' Perspective on Collaborative Governance in Crisis

This article contributes to the emerging field of research on collaborative governance in crises. It asks how social organisations see their contribution of skills and expertise to tackling a wicked problem such as the Covid-19 pandemic. For this purpose, I interviewed representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations about their work and relationships with the local government in Manchester in 2020 and 2021. Ethnic Chinese organisations are an interesting group because they had early access to knowledge about the spread of the virus and its harmfulness. Collaboration with them could potentially have helped to contain the pandemic in the ethnic Chinese community in the city and beyond. Based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of ethnic Chinese organisations and applying the combined theoretical frameworks of social capital and collaborative governance theories, the study identifies five organisational types in terms of their involvement in collaborative governance efforts. © The Author(s) 2023.

Combating COVID-19 through Collaborative Governance: Lessons from East Asia

Collaborative governance plays a significant role in crisis management and greatly contributes to the fight against COVID-19. This article demonstrates how East Asia effectively combats COVID-19 through collaboration with enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and citizens. By comparing different countries' responses, this study proposes three different types of collaborative governance models employed in combating the pandemic, namely the Chinese state-led cooperation model, South Korea's state-society synergy model, and Japan's social voluntary cooperation model. The findings demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all model to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. The specific response initiative that the government adopts is shaped by its state intervention and coercion capacity, as well as the social voluntary cooperation norm. Each country should take anti-pandemic measures based on its specific conditions. Achieving a balance between preventing the pandemic and maintaining social economic development is a challenge for governments. The three collaboration models drawn from the East Asian experience provide valuable lessons for combating the global pandemic and future crises.

An evaluation of the accessibility of community health facilities under public health emergencies: insights from the floor area ratio in Ningbo, China

Urban management under public health emergencies is an issue that has been increasingly highlighted since the outbreak of COVID-19. Although the spatial inequities that exist within Community Health Facilities (CHFs) is a growing public health concern worldwide, no single study has yet identified the potential issues which constrain the utilisation of CHFs under public emergency scenarios within China. This study uses a quantitative case study approach to investigate the correlations between CHFs and development intensity in Yinzhou, Ningbo. Data, including OpenStreetMap, LocaSpace Viewer (LSV) and satellite images, was collected and analysed via Geographic Information System (GIS). The results of this study show that there is an urban–rural division in the development of CHFs, and that facilities possess limited accessibility where they border different administrative districts. We suggest that the 'boundary effect' of CHFs has been caused by changing standards in the building of CHFs and a lack of financial support in rural areas. It is subsequently recommended that a climate of collaborative governance should be established to reconcile the interests of investing in CHFs in different districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Development Planning Review is the property of Liverpool University Press / Journals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Developing a civic capacity index: measuring community capacity to respond to civic challenges

PurposeSome communities in the USA are remarkably better at responding to civic challenges than others. These communities are more competent at marshaling their resources - material and human - in service of their own needs. The authors' purpose in this paper is to enhance their collective understanding of ideas related to community-driven change and to describe the development of a civic capacity index (CCI), a measure of a community's capacity to respond to civic challenges and disruptions like COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a concept mapping process (akin to grounded theory) to develop the CCI. Using this process, a panel of 34 scholars and practitioners of civic leadership and civic engagement worked together to create measurable descriptors of civic capacity.FindingsThe CCI measures dynamic processes related to collective leadership, inclusion of diverse voices, how institutions and coalitions address shared challenges and collaboration among community members. Sample data from several states show the CCI's scales to have high internal reliabilities and to correlate strongly with validation scales such as collective efficacy, social justice and community connectedness. Confirmatory factor analyses support a bifactor model of a general CCI factor and six CCI scales.Practical implicationsWith the help of the CCI, civic actors can take advantage of existing civic capacity, understand where it is lacking and build resilience for the future.Originality/valueTo date, most scholars have used qualitative research to determine the elements of civic capacity. The authors wanted to know what civic capacity looks like in sufficient detail to assess the extent to which it is present or not in a community. Other efforts to quantify or assess civic capacity or related ideas are less comprehensive or lack the specificity to provide guidance for building and mobilizing it in communities. This work enhances our understanding of leadership in the civic arena, a little understood aspect of leadership studies.

For Preparedness as Transformation

In this paper we point out the topic and the rational of the symposium aiming on the one hand to connect preparedness to the uncertainty that characterizes society-environment relation, on the other hand to emphasise the need for sociology not only to denounce the governmental implications of preparedness but also to engage constructively with this category. We begin by recalling the framework changes that have characterized the social sciences??? understanding of disasters by showing how progressively the idea of disaster as a one-time event that disrupts a society from the outside has been complemented by an idea of disaster as a critical moment embedded in historically determined social structures. We will then discuss how the emergence of the preparedness paradigm fits within these developments and how sociological research can help to better understand what is at stake in the governing of (and by) preparedness. In this perspective we advance a reading of preparedness from the vantage point of knowledge. As a conclusion, we discuss how the understanding of preparedness as dependent on socio-ecological transformation raises specific challenges for territorial governance.

Spatial governance for COVID-19 prevention and control in China's development zones.

Mandatory policy networks are an important collaborative governance model for crisis response. To reveal the operation and effectiveness of public sector-led crisis governance at the development zone level, this study draws on collaborative governance theory to develop a theoretical framework that reveals the external constraints, collaborative dynamics, collaborative actions, and collaborative outcomes of crisis governance in development zones. Based on qualitative research methods, this study analyzes pandemic prevention policy documents issued during the pandemic by China's national economic and technological development zones and their localities to reflect the complete process of governance. The findings indicate that a mandatory policy network, guided by a local governance framework, facilitated the rapid achievement of collaboration in development zones in responding to the crisis. Top-down leadership developed over time in the public sector, and the responsiveness and innovation of enterprises and social organizations played an important role in collaborative governance. Wins at each stage of the governance process are necessary for the continuation of collaborative actions and can drive the adaptation of a collaborative approach in development zones.

Low-carbon tourism for island destinations: A crucial alternative for sustainable development

The impact of climate change has been evidenced in several tourist destinations, and triggered concerns on the destination development. Low-carbon tourism has become a national, if not, global agenda that can be used to mitigate the climate change impact caused by the tourist destinations. To respond to this timely agenda and the United Nation World Tourism Organisation's (UNWTO) callout, this study establishes and verifies important components and attributes of low-Carbon destinations, particularly on island destination, which are still unexamined in the literature. Taking on the perspective of tourists, this study is driven by Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory which is a consolidative theoretical framework that integrates environmental input (external), emotional status (internal) and behavioural responses to explain actual behaviours of low-carbon tourists. Integrated generalised structured component analysis (IGSCA) and multigroup analysis were performed on 1808 travellers who posed different degrees of psychological fear of the COVID-19 pandemic. During COVID-19, health and safety risks have become a critical concern;therefore, this study further explores the moderating effect of risk from the perspective of the low- and high-perceived risk travellers, before identifying the attitude-behaviour gaps of these two groups. The study provides theoretical insights into low-carbon tourism experience at the island destinations and offers useful managerial implications on low-carbon destination development.

Does Social Innovation Matter for Government? An Exploratory Study

Social innovation scholars and sociologists regard shocks and crises that impact heavily on social systems as opportunities for self-reflection and as windows of opportunity for the emergence of new ideas and possibilities. In this sense, the social systems recovery in the new normal post-Covid19 era can open new opportunities for the spreading of the transformational impact of social innovation. This will concern also public administration organizations since social innovation can also be seen as a particular perspective on how the public sector should be reformed. Hence, social innovation should be a topic of particular interest for public administration scholars. The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate whether and how social innovation has been considered in the top academic public administration journals. The study confirms that the topic is still underexplored in this literature and highlights some possible research directions that can contribute to bridge this gap. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Collaboration to combat COVID-19: policy responses and best practices in local integrated care settings.

PURPOSE: This illustrative case study describes and evaluates drivers of effective inter-organizational collaboration to mitigate the impact and spread of COVID-19 among homeless people in two cities in the Netherlands. The aims of this study are: (1) to explore the strategic and operational policy responses in two local integrated care settings at the start of the crisis, (2) to identify best policy practices and lessons learned. The authors interpret and evaluate the findings by combining insights from the population health management (PHM) and collaborative governance literature. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The authors describe and illustrate the experiences of two Dutch municipalities, Rotterdam and The Hague, in the early policy responses to sudden operational challenges around the impact of COVID-19 on homeless people as experienced by local decision-makers, medical doctors and clients. FINDINGS: The authors show that best policy practices revolve around (1) using data and risk stratification methods for identifying and targeting populations at-risk in local policy making, and (2) having an inter-organizational data sharing architecture in place ex ante. These two factors were clear prerequisites for tailor-made policy responses for newly-defined groups at risk with the existing and well-documented vulnerable population, and executing crisis-induced tasks efficiently. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This paper is among the first to illustrate the potential of combining collaborative governance and PHM perspectives to identify key drivers of effective local governance responses to a healthcare crisis in an integrated care setting.

Evolving Consumption Trends, Marketing Strategies, and Governance Settings in Ornamental Horticulture: A Grey Literature Review

Ornamentals are the most diversified products and fast-changing industry of horticulture. A new flower and ornamental plant market scenario is developing: remarkable opportunities are emerging, but more efforts are required by both public and private stakeholders to seize them and assure a high-value positioning. Our paper aims at filling the gap in the availability of integrated data sources and structured theoretically sound studies on new consumption trends, marketing strategies, and governance settings. Specific objectives are: identifying an innovative ornamental horticulture market data framework;evidencing evolving dynamics of competition in Europe and necessary adaptions of public and private action;defining a new action-research agenda, capable of stimulating the interest of businesses, researchers, and institutions. In terms of methodology, we carry out an innovative integrative review analysis of the wide and most reliable grey literature and statistics, using a comprehensive approach. Results show the emerging consumption dynamics and high-value consumer profiles characterizing the European market, expected to significantly expand and transform, according to the impact of globalization, climate change, urbanization, digitalization, and the affirmation of neo-luxury and sustainability-oriented consumption patterns. The evolution of marketing strategies and governance settings is also highlighted, together with the necessity of developing and integrating public and private initiatives for realizing high-value sustainable and transparent production systems and supply chains. Accordingly, relevant action-research directions are described. These findings are expected to improve the current debate on the competitiveness of the European ornamental industry and contribute to taking a step towards a synergic combination of new differential advantages and wider sustainability goals.

Collaborative governance in emergencies: community food supply in COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Country governments and the WHO advocated that the "whole-of-government" and the "whole-of-society" approaches are necessary to fight against the pandemic. However, it is unclear what it means in practice and its implication in the of context of food security and in emergencies. This article examines in the “whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach” (WOG-WOS), how the government and non-government stakeholders’ has quickly engaged in collaborative governance to address the community food supply challenges. This research analysed government policies and reports, scanned grey literature and conduced in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in Wuhan working on the frontline of food supply during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns. The findings contribute to the literature on collaborative governance in emergency management. The case of Wuhan tells the point that the government and society are interdependent in emergencies. For the whole society to achieve its full potential, the government need to focus on the goals, function as an open-minded coordinator and adopt a flexible governing structure.

Governing a Pandemic: Assessing the Role of Collaboration on Latin American Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis

How do governments address complex, cross-sectoral problems, like the COVID-19 pandemic? Why were some Latin American countries more successful at containing the pandemic's most devastating health outcomes? We argue that national governments that were more collaborative in their response to COVID-19 were more successful in reducing death rates. Our original dataset offers a novel attempt to operationalise collaborative governance (CG). We undertake simple statistical tests to measure the relationship between CG and COVID-19-related mortality rates in Latin America. We then choose three case studies to assess whether collaboration was meaningful in practice. Initial evidence suggests governments that pursued CG were more effective at containing mortality rates early on in the pandemic. The collaboration helped to foster cooperation over resources;buy time to prepare for a potential case surge;and produce a unified message regarding what citizens should do to prevent viral spread.

More collaboration, less seriousness: Investigating new strategies for promoting youth engagement in government-generated videos during the COVID-19 pandemic in China.

Effectively engaging citizens during crises is critical for governments to disseminate timely information and help the public to adjust to the constantly changing conditions. In particular, promoting youth engagement not only enhances crisis awareness and resilience among the young generation, but also has a positive impact on youths' social participation and responsibility. With the increasing popularity of online video services, leveraging online videos to disseminate authoritative information has become a method widely adopted by government. To enhance youth awareness and engagement, two new video-based crisis communication strategies have been utilized on a popular youth-targeted video platform Bilibili in China: creating recreational videos such as animation and music videos, and collaborating with individual video-uploaders in video making. However, their impacts and results are largely unknown, which motivates our study. Guided by Entertainment Education (EE) and Collaborative Governance (CG), we report, to our best knowledge, the first systematic study on how recreational video category and government-citizen collaboration would influence youth engagement focusing on 3347 COVID-19-related government-generated videos on Bilibili. This study reveals that recreational videos successfully promote youth engagement including interaction, feedback and sharing. Collaboration with individual uploaders in video making also has a substantially positive impact on youth engagement. Through an in-depth qualitative content analysis of user-generated commentaries, we further unpacked the unique values (e.g., trust work for youth participation) as well as latent limitations (e.g., imbalanced topic distribution) of the two new strategies. We discuss how the findings enrich EE and CG theoretically, and provide practical implications to effective and engaging communication strategies during crises.

Collaborative neighborhood governance and its effectiveness in community mitigation to COVID-19 pandemic: From the perspective of community workers in six Chinese cities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a governance challenge for nations and cities across the world. While early observations have primarily focused on government actions, neighborhoods are at the frontline for coordinating grassroots level joint actions to fight against the pandemic. We draw from the collaborative governance theory and develop a theoretical framework for understanding the horizontal and hierarchical dynamics of collaborative neighborhood governance during crisis responses in urban China. Using a large-scale questionnaire survey of frontline community workers operated in six Chinese cities in February 2020, we conduct statistical analyses and find that the effectiveness of neighborhood collaboration in the pandemic control is predicted by both neighborhood social capital (i.e. civic engagement and citizen participation) and hierarchical steering by the government through setting policy priorities and providing support. Our research contributes to the international literature on neighborhood governance dynamics and provides policy lessons for improving neighborhood governance capacity in crisis response situations.

The Power of Collaborative Governance: The Case of South Korea Responding to COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented global health crisis, has challenged the current systems of governance, both global governance and national governance. While the alleged "advanced" societies have shown their vulnerabilities and incompetence to deal with this crisis so far, a few countries have shown better ways of responding, in particular South Korea. In dealing with this kind of health crisis, criticism and praise can easily point to the national government and their policies, but rarely to the entire governance system and collaborative efforts of various actors. This article explores the synergy produced by the entire governance system participated in by various sectors, including both public and private ones, namely the collaborative governance, as an important factor of its more successful control of the epidemic compared with other countries.