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COVID-19 Secure Guidance: Organizational Decision Making and Politics in a Public Health Crisis

Pamela Odih

23 March 2021, a year since the first “work from home” government instruction so as to rein the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in the United Kingdom. On 25 March 2020, the Coronavirus Act 2020 gained Royal Assent, came into law and it is a parliamentary consensus that the Act has beneficially enhanced the ability of public bodies to implement measures to save lives. In a commitment to continuously review the COVID-19 secure guidance that operationalizes the Act, the One Year Report on the Status on the Non-devolved Provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 was presented to Parliament in March 2021. In parallel response to the Government’s review of measures implemented to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, organizational theorists have investigated the management of compliance with these containment efforts. Bounded rationality, the classical rational choice critique, as espoused by Herbert A. Simon, is a spurious penchant given its inadvertence of structural formulation. Primarily informed by a critical realist approach to the politics of organizational decisionmaking this article identifies limitations in rational choice theory, coupled with gender blind technological determinism, as insufficiently recognised determinants of compliance with COVID-19 secure workplace guidance.