System-quake proof ‘systemic resilience governance’: Six measures for readiness

Abstract

Public administration has witnessed an avalanche of crises spanning financial, economic, health, environmental and governmental domains in the past two decades. Consequently, governments responded with volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) management strategies. Utilising these approaches to new types of systemic crisis which turned into systemic breakdowns, as system-quakes, did not work sufficiently. This article presents the TODO framework—turbulent environments, oscillating knowledge quality, domino falling types of interdependence and opposing ‘solutions’—for understanding these contemporary systemic crisis patterns. Additionally, we propose six institutional reforms aiming at enhancing readiness, including (1) establishing a New Weberian State (NWS) to foster ‘systemic resilience governance’, (2) shifting sequential to simultaneous thinking, (3) embracing a Whole of Government (WoG)/Whole of Society (WoS) approach, (4) ensuring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation, (5) fostering institutional alignment and (6) promoting collaborative organisational leadership. These reforms aim to create a governance structure characterised by resilience and systemic responsiveness.