Crisis Management in a Federation – Cybernetic Lessons from a Pandemic

We aim to contribute to improving the management of pandemic crises. Our focus is on federal systems, as these are particularly powerful in dealing with environmental complexity. Through five waves of the pandemic, spanning a year and a half, we study the management of the crisis in the Swiss Federation. The purpose of this research is learning for how to deal with crises of the same type in the future. We apply the Viable System Model (VSM) as a framework for our inquiry, elaborating a diagnosis and a design for the management of epidemic or pandemic crises. The VSM is a conceptual tool that is particularly strong for analyzing federal systems. Hence substantial insights have surfaced to orientate a future crisis management.