Abstract

As society faces more crises, it is critical for leaders, especially at the local level, to make decisions and intervene before reaching the tipping point. This often requires collective sensemaking across boundaries, but most studies focus on the challenges. This article asks how decision makers make timely decisions. It presents an institutions-process framework and analyzes the process and mechanism in the case of the response of E-Zhong City—just over an hour’s drive from Wuhan City in Hubei Province—to COVID-19 in the “Golden Seven Days” of 2020. Decision makers achieved timely decisions by exploiting all possible political opportunities and institutional tools, maximizing the diversity of the information available, and using multiple discourses and frameworks to enhance personal crisis awareness and achieve collective sensemaking across boundaries. This article defines the mechanism as bricolage and defines these decision makers as institution-knowledge bricoleurs. The concept of institution-knowledge bricoleurs extends the study of crisis decision making and the relationship between institutions and sensemaking.

摘要

随着社会面临更多危机，领导者，尤其是地方领导者，在达到临界点之前做出决定并进行干预至关重要。这通常需要跨越边界的集体意义建构，但大多数研究都关注挑战。本文询问决策者如何做出及时的决策。它提出了一个制度过程框架，并以距湖北省武汉市仅一个多小时车程的鄂中市在 2020 年“黄金七日”应对 COVID-19 为例，分析了过程和机制. 决策者通过利用所有可能的政治机会和制度工具及时做出决策，最大限度地提高可用信息的多样性，并使用多种话语和框架来增强个人危机意识并实现跨界的集体意义建构。本文将该机制定义为 bricoleur，并将这些决策者定义为制度知识 bricoleurs。制度知识bricoleurs 的概念扩展了危机决策制定和制度与意义建构之间关系的研究。