THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT TEAMS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF COVID-19

The aim of the article is to find an answer to the main research problem, how the covid-19 pandemic affected the functioning of crisis management teams and on the way to its solution. The following subsidiary questions were used: What is the composition and mode of work of provincial, district and municipal crisis management teams, with what frequency were the meetings of the teams held in the period before and during the pandemic, what problems the teams encountered during the counteraction to the pandemic, and what should be done to improve their work in the future? The theoretical part discusses issues related to crisis management and its evaluation process. The empirical part presents the methodology of own research and its results. The presented study was conducted on selected units of public institutions from 2018 to 2021. The questionnaires were sent to public administration bodies by e-mail, to the addresses of security and crisis management departments or crisis management centers provided on the websites of the above institutions. The authors of this article aimed primarily to learn about selected, most important issues concerning the activities of crisis management teams rather than to quantitatively measure specific parameters of their functioning. That is why crisis management teams functioning on the level of voivodships from the whole of Poland were subjected to qualitative research. One voivodship was randomly chosen to make a qualitative analysis of the functioning of poviat crisis management teams. Then one poviat from the above-mentioned voivodship, i.e. Słupsk poviat, was randomly chosen, of which the communal crisis management teams functioning in that area were examined. The research results showed that there is no need to introduce radical changes in the functioning of crisis management teams at the territorial levels of their functioning (voivodship, poviat and commune). Pandemic covid-19 modified the mode of work of teams from stationary to remote, which in the future can be used in solving other non-military crises. Assessing the efficiency of the teams, it can be indicated that they function best at the provincial level. Based on the conducted research, the authors presented postulates to improve the functioning of crisis management teams. The issues discussed in the article can be interesting for both theoreticians and practitioners specializing in crisis management. © 2022, Czestochowa University of Technology. All rights reserved.