Social Problems Within the Context of Leadership and Public Policies in the Post-COVID Era

This chapter focuses on the social problems within the context of leadership and conducting public policies for supporting the social sphere after the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted, yet again, the importance of social inequalities in times of great crises, and this reality has obvious implications for public policy and its main leaders. In addition, it impacted on the problems of leadership by questioning the leading role of the state authorities versus the private business companies. In particular, COVID-19 has exposed, intensified, and reinforced the existing social inequalities as well as created some new, for example, issues on the labor market and with the requalification of employees or the pressing need for digitalization of public administration and the introduction of e-government. It can be noted that COVID-19 restrictions thus impacted the personal social networks and the structure of the larger networks within the society. This chapter observes that social connections generate emergent properties in the community, especially in the sense of social networks. This chapter also provides recommendations to governments and other stakeholders for supporting safe reopening of various activities and supporting social services and other public policies and initiatives throughout the outbreak of COVID-19 and beyond.