Frontline Innovation in Times of Crisis: Learning from the Corona Virus Pandemic

16 Pages Posted: 11 May 2020

See all articles by Mia Rosa Koss Hartmann

Mia Rosa Koss Hartmann

Royal Danish Defence College

Rasmus Koss Hartmann

Copenhagen Business School

Date Written: May 11, 2020

Abstract

The current Covid-19 pandemic brings about dramatic challenges for frontline police officers and their organisations. This will, we argue, likely have two implications for frontline learning and innovation. Firstly, the pandemic will surely occasion a surge of frontline improvisation and innovation in police organizations responding to the crisis as the experienced needs for new solutions dramatically increase. Secondly, but equally importantly, this wave of frontline innovation is likely to be more transparent than is typically the case for innovations developed in frontline police work, because of changes in formal mandates and informal tolerance for procedural deviance. At this moment of unusually widespread and transparent frontline innovation, we propose an approach to capturing and diffusing this frontline innovation. By taking seriously the unique dynamics of frontline innovation, such an approach is likely to capture valuable innovations that might otherwise rapidly dissipate and be lost.

Keywords: Frontline innovation, organizational learning, lessons learned, Corona Virus

Suggested Citation

Hartmann, Mia Rosa Koss and Hartmann, Rasmus Koss, Frontline Innovation in Times of Crisis: Learning from the Corona Virus Pandemic (May 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3598033 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3598033

Mia Rosa Koss Hartmann

Royal Danish Defence College ( email )

Copenhagen
Denmark

Rasmus Koss Hartmann (Contact Author)

Copenhagen Business School ( email )

Solbjerg Plads 3
Frederiksberg C, DK - 2000
Denmark

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