Adapting locally in response to a prolonged crisis: Feedback from French local authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic[Comment s’adapter localement pour répondre à une crise qui dure ? Retour d’expérience des collectivités locales pendant la crise COVID-19]

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how difficult it is for organizations to adapt to radical environmental changes that they cannot predict and for which they are unprepared. Compliance with formal rules and procedures (bureaucratic governance) is challenged by the need for more flexible and decentralized decision-making (network governance). This gives rise to two main tensions faced by public decision-makers in the context of a prolonged crisis: can local organizations share key resources when the logical approach would be to prioritize their own interests, and to what extent can they negotiate their autonomy with State services in order to meet their need for flexibility? This article aims to study how interorganizational collaboration can respond to these tensions by exploring the management of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic by French local authorities. By adopting an inductive method based on interviews with different local government decision-makers, our results show three levers of interorganizational collaboration that were mobilized by these actors: activation of latent networks, alignment on shared higher-level objectives, and the ability to remain flexible with respect to institutional frameworks. These results pave the way for a discussion on the potential development of modes of governance between State and local organizations that support the ability of public sector decision-makers to adapt to adverse situations.