The Impact of COVID-19 on the Romanian Hospitals’ Expenses. A Case Study Toward the Financial Resilience after the Pandemic

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affect­ed almost all activities worldwide. The medical sec­tor was one of those which were most significantly impacted because the medical infrastructure was not sized for such a high scale shock, specialized human resources and medical infrastructure prov­ing to be much undersized and with slow growth potential. Many changes were required, important financial resources being mobilized in order to mo­tivate medical staff, offer treatments for the most severely affected patients, but also to create new fa­cilities where the increasing number of sick persons could be cured. In our research we want to offer a hospital cost perspective based on empirical analysis of the COVID-19 impact on different categories of expens­es made by Romanian hospitals that treated patients with COVID-19 in different stages of their disease. The period analyzed was January 2019 to December 2020 on a monthly basis. Our results showed that expenses with goods and services, drugs, reagents and human resources are influenced by COVID-19 in a significant manner.

Resilient Leadership. Qualitative Study on Factors Influencing Organizational Resilience and Adaptive Response to Adversity

Given the turbulent environment that govern­ments and citizens across the globe faced in the last two years (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), one concept seems to stand out as extremely valuable in this context: resilience. Resilience, understood as the capacity of a sys­tem to bounce back from adversity, becomes a key component in the equation of post-pandemic evo­lution and recovery. Resilient leadership is just one of the multiple derived applications of the general resilience concept, referring (in an institutional set­ting) to the capacity of leaders to turn out positive results despite adverse conditions. Based on quali­tative research consisting of 10 interviews conduct­ed with women leaders (from the private and non­profit sectors) during the last 18 months, our results show that governmental response (regulation and support) and financial pressures have been the ma­jor organizational challenges no matter the sector, while organizational dimension seems to have an influence on the capacity to adapt and respond to adversity. Gender does not seem to play a role in the response provided to the crisis.

Perceptions on the Implementation of the Integrated Territorial Investment Mechanism (ITI) and Its Impact on Sustainable Development and Resilience of Danube Delta

The Integrated Territorial Investment mechanism (ITI) was implemented in Romania to the territory of ITI Danube Delta in the 2014-2020 programming period. In this respect, the present article aims to analyze the process of implementation of the ITI mechanism on the Danube Delta territory in order to find out the impact of its implementation on the so­cio-economic development of the area and on its re­silience, as well as the main problems encountered by the responsible authorities for managing this pro­gramme and the beneficiaries of these funds. The research methodology consists of a survey conduct­ed by using two questionnaires designed by the au­thors. The study had 42 participants from the fund managers’ category and 71 participants from the beneficiaries’ group. The study revealed a positive perception among all the participants which consid­ered that ITI impacts the resilience of the Danube Delta territory to a medium extent. The most import­ant problems encountered in the implementation process were the pre-financing process, the guides’ conditions that are not adapted to the beneficiaries’ needs and the public procurement process. The re­search revealed a high degree of satisfaction from both types of respondents regarding the ITI mech­anism and a good relation between the managing institutions and beneficiaries.

The Dark Side of Resilient Leaders: Vampire Leadership

While ‘bad’ leaders can include incompetent, oc­casionally self-indulgent, and lazy leaders, an import­ant special category of leader has long been estab­lished in the literature for those whose egotism and ill-will toward others have corrupted ‘good’ leader­ship norms. Such behavior is generally called toxic. This essay further builds on that analysis by exam­ining leaders who are not simply occasionally toxic, but whose whole agenda is to fan division, hatred, and malignant collective delusion. The article first examines good leadership using servant and resil­ient leadership theory. Then it provides examples of varying degrees of toxicity based on eight elements in which good leadership is perverted. Finally, the ar­ticle looks at President Donald Trump as an example of ruthless rapaciousness and whose tenacity (re­silience) enables him to maximize his toxicity over time – vampire leadership.

Institutional Dynamics and Economic Resilience in Central and Eastern EU Countries. Relevance for Policies

In the global context generated by the 2008-2009 economic crisis and by the current COVID-19 pan­demic, the analysis of the way in which territories can resist, return and adapt to shocks has become a priority for resilience-based policies. The paper aims to investigate the role of institutions in economic re­silience, in the particular case of Central and Eastern European countries since, despite the ongoing con­vergence process, the institutional gaps and weak­nesses of these states challenge their possibilities to recover after this health crisis, as well as to im­prove their resilience capacity. The methodological approach involves, firstly, a cross-country time-se­ries panel regression, using the annual data from 1996 until 2019. Secondly, we applied the principal component regression, in order to capture the coun­try specificities. The research focuses on the link­ages between institutional dynamics and economic resilience, an issue less reflected in literature. Our results confirm the influence of institutional factors on economic resilience and, more importantly, it is highlighted that the ‘one size fits all’ principle does not apply in the case of recovery and resilience pro­grams, which is due to the fact that institutions act differently, depending on various socio-economic and political contexts.

Followership Resilience in Administrative Structures: A New Perspective

The study explores followership resilience in three Bulgarian municipalities. Its purpose is twofold: first, to draw the attention of researchers and managers on followership resilience, and second, to explore proactivity and trust as factors of followership re­silience in administrative structures. The study is based on a qualitative approach, and uses a combi­nation of two research strategies – exploratory and descriptive. Data is collected through semi-struc­tured interviews with a sample of 35 municipal em­ployees (10.2% from the general population). Follow­ership resilience is analyzed by means of followers’ psychological readiness to participate in the deci­sion-making process and to trust superiors. Four types of followers are identified and strengths and weaknesses of each type are discussed. The prefer­ence of the majority of interviewees (69%) to follow instructions and not to trust leaders is interpreted. It is concluded that the formula for successful fol­lowership resilience in terms of proactivity and trust involves achieving balance and coherence.

Chinese Local Governments’ Behavioral Logic of Early-Warning Information Release Regarding Major Epidemic Outbreaks from the Organizational Analysis Perspective

Based on the three-dimensional ‘organizational goal – organizational field – organizational incen­tive’ analysis framework, this paper attempts to conduct a comparative and diachronic analysis of the behavioral logic of Chinese local governments’ early-warning information release in major epidemic outbreaks. The results of the research show that the organizational goal, field and incentive are highly rel­evant to different strategic choices of whether local governments should, will and are willing to perform their governance function; additionally, different combinations of these elements trigger different lo­cal government behaviors. The organizational goal, field and incentive are the starting point, turning point, and end point of local governments’ behavior­al logic, respectively, while the organizational field is prerequisite for the organizational incentive to work. The organizational goal – organizational field – organizational incentive sequence reflects the se­quence and interactive relationship of local govern­ments’ behavioral logic.

A Case Study on China’s Policies of Promoting Work Resumption During the COVID-19 Pandemic — Perspective of Policy Resilience

During the COVID-19 pandemic, China has achieved high recovery efficiency. One of the most important reasons behind this is the effective poli­cies of promoting work resumption. Why can such policies maintain steady performance despite the high level of environmental uncertainties? This ques­tion can be answered from the perspective of policy resilience. This study employed a policy evaluation model for analyzing quantitative data of 342 poli­cies of promoting work resumption. We evaluate the policies through the Policy Modeling Consistency (PMC-index) model and text mining methods. The results show that: first, the contents and elements of all policies have consistent characteristics, including the combination of multiple policy tools, the combi­nation of support for work resumption and pandem­ic control, the incentives to support effective policy implementation, and the reasonable match between macro and micro policies as well as short-term and long-term policies. Second, among the nine policies that are randomly selected from the sample, one is rated excellent and the other eight are good, indicat­ing that China’s policies of promoting work resump­tion have good resilience.

A Content Analysis of Public Policy Design and Implementation in Slovenia: Weighing Strategic and Normative Factors

"Policy processes are complex systems and require an in-depth and comprehensive analysis. Especially, factors that affect public policy design and implementation, as two important stages of the public policy cycle, have not been sufficiently explored. The aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between two critical factors that influence the design and implementation of public policies in the case of Slovenia, namely strategic factors and normative factors, and offer a basis for comparison with similar countries. Based on twenty-two structured interviews with prominent public policy experts in Slovenia and content analysis of the responses, the findings reveal that, although strategic factors are identified by the interviewees as the most critical, the role of normative factors is also important and should not be underestimated. For various reasons, in practice, normative factors often turn out to be crucial."

Public-Private Arbitration in Romanian Law

The article endeavors to introduce the constitutional and statutory framework for arbitration in Romania, whilst discussing the dilemmatic legislative provisions allowing for public entities to become parties in an arbitration dispute. It includes a discussion of the concept of administrative contracts in Romania and a chronological analysis of the evolution of public-private arbitration under administrative contracts. Some of the landmark Romanian public-private arbitrations under international investment treaties have held the public agenda in recent years and they shape the public debate on arbitration as fit for purpose when it comes to public contracts.