Towards a sustainable integrated management approach to uncertainty surrounding COVID-19

Traditional approaches to system management are not suited to highly uncertain conditions. Hard system approaches with a top-down management approach are often used to manage well-defined systems that are not easily able to cope with uncertainty. Soft system approaches of the with bottom-up or participative style may cause a lack of conformance to industry standards. Few studies have investigated these approaches within the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this paper aims to use the philosophy of Total Systems Intervention to investigate the applicability of an integrated management approach to cope with the uncertainty of COVID-19. Three different countries from Europe, Oceania and Asia are selected as typical case studies to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of differing management approaches. The case studies demonstrate that using an integrated management approach can potentially assist decision-makers to deal with crises and conclusively reveal the superiority of the integrated approach, independent of cultural milieu.