Leadership in the Time of Covid

The Covid pandemic has put all modern societies to a serious test of resilience. The interdisciplinary research on which this book is based examined how four European governments behaved in these circumstances. During the months of the crisis, the team of experts coordinated by the editors of this volume took a close look at the decision-making processes in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia – the so-called Visegrad Four.

The inquiries focused on experiences from the academic, health, economic and social fields. The methods of comparison included surveys, interviews, discourse analysis, for which the adaptive leadership theory provided the conceptual framework.

The conclusions are both academic and practical. Aside the description of the pandemic responses, the research had a formative dimension: how can an adaptive leadership approach better help societies manage the health and societal impacts of similar challenges? The spectrum of emerging anti-democratic tendencies in the region provided the specific context of the exercise. The four states face varying degrees of democratic backsliding as well as illiberal influences that have affected their response to the pandemic, which gives this research on the Visegrad Four a worldwide resonance.

Milada Polišenská is a Czech professor and researcher specialized in history of diplomacy and international relations, and modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe. Currently she works in Prague as Provost of the Anglo-American University.

Joshua M. Hayden, Ed.D. is Chair of Department of Social Sciences in the school of Humanities and Social Sciences and lecturer in Leadership Studies at Anglo-American University in Prague, Czechia. Joshua Hayden earned his doctorate in higher education leadership and policy from Vanderbilt University in the U.S. and has published and taught in the field of leadership studies for the past ten years. He is experienced in corporate, nonprofit and public sector leadership consulting and training.

Dr. George Hays II is the Chair of International Relations in the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Anglo-American University in Prague. He received his doctorate in International Relations from Charles University in Prague. Dr. Hays lectures in the areas of International Relations theory, war studies, Central European politics, and Post-Structural analysis. He has published works analyzing identity formation in both American and Czech discourses, as well as works that analyze Czechoslovak history, and numerous commentaries on contemporary politics and international conflicts.