Trust And Governance in a Rethinking of Classical Knowledge Management Paradigms: Toolkits for Public Sector During the COVID-19 Emergency

Abstract

The post Covid-19 world is characterized by new technologies and a smart city approach. For this reason, the public sector must shift from the classic paradigms to a new way, following a Knowledge Management (KM) approach, to perform its role in dealing with emergency situations.  Starting from classical KM models, we conducted a regional case study, showing how the process of rethinking is boosted by citizens’ needs and pushed by the trust of the stakeholders in the central authority. In fact, as highlighted by part of the international literature, local authorities’ planning aims to achieve public value and alignment between stakeholders and policy making represents one of the main goals to be achieved. With an OLS regression we estimated the correlation between the trust of citizens and the statutory actions taken by central and peripheral government, showing that only with the alignment of public policies and the will of the citizens is it possible to overcome a crisis. Moreover, we underline the gaps in the literature and the missing links, with the aim of creating a KM model that can also be applied in the near future.