What Drives Successful Administrative Performance during Crises? Lessons from Refugee Migration and the Covid‐19 Pandemic

The Covid‐19 pandemic affects societies worldwide, challenging not only health sectors but also public administration systems in general. Understanding why public administrations perform well in the current situation—and in times of crisis more generally—is theoretically of great importance, and identifying concrete factors driving successful administrative performance under today's extraordinary circumstances could still improve current crisis responses. This article studies patterns of sound administrative performance with a focus on networks and knowledge management within and between crises. Subsequently, it draws on empirical evidence from two recent public administration surveys conducted in Germany in order to test derived hypotheses. The results of tests for group differences and regression analyses demonstrate that administrations that were structurally prepared, learned during preceding crises, and displayed a high quality in their network cooperation with other administrations and with the civil society, on average, performed significantly better in the respective crises. EVIDENCE FOR PRACTICE: While practitioners often prefer centralized and hierarchical solutions in times of crisis, this study highlights the potential of reflexive and adaptive use of multiactor networks to cope with the extraordinary. Administrations that are prepared and that display a high quality in their network cooperation with other administrations and with civil society, on average, performed significantly better in their respective crises. Knowledge management and resource sharing—both among administrative units and with civil society—increase organizational ability to perform well in crisis situations. Administrations do best when lessons learned in crises are accessibly stored and when previously successful crisis networks can be quickly revitalized, thus allowing for intercrisis learning—documentation of best practices during crises—via smart or traditional forms of data storing and organizational memory keeping—further boost the performance of administrations during succeeding crises. In the early stages of a crisis, decision makers need to invest in organizational self‐awareness of how challenges are mastered and how insights about optimal coping are best passed on.