Anais
Resumo do trabalho
Administração Pública · Gestão em Saúde
Título
Crisis Without a Script: Improvisational Leadership in Brazil’s Only Suspected Ebola Case
Palavras-chave
Crisis Management
Care Biopolitics
Improvisational Leadership
Agradecimento:
This research was supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). We are grateful for their institutional support in funding and enabling this study.
Autores
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Maria Carolina Fóscolo GomesUNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS (UFMG)
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Alexandre de Pádua CarrieriUNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS (UFMG)
Resumo
Introdução
In 2015, a Brazilian nurse was unexpectedly called to assess a patient suspected of carrying the Ebola virus—the only such case ever recorded in the country. With no protocols, with poor protective equipment, and no prior training, she had to make life-and-death decisions on the spot. This article explores how frontline health workers managed that moment of chaos, turning ethical instinct into an improvised form of crisis leadership.
Problema de Pesquisa e Objetivo
To examine how individual and collective improvisational practices shaped the organizational response to an unprecedented biothreat in Brazil’s public healthcare infrastructure.
Fundamentação Teórica
Anchored in critical organization theory and inspired by Foucault and Mbembe, we introduce the concept of “biopolitics of care”—a situated form of power and protection deployed under institutional silence. This theoretical lens articulates how frontline workers navigate ethical and embodied responses within necropolitical conditions.
Metodologia
Using a narrative inquiry approach, we reconstruct the case through an in-depth oral history interview with the only nurse who directly attended the suspected Ebola patient. The analysis employs abductive coding to trace improvisational sequences, moral reasoning, and institutional silences
Análise dos Resultados
We identify three tactical forms of improvisation: (1) situational triage beyond protocol; (2) ethical deliberation under epistemic void; and (3) embodied coordination as resistance. These practices produced temporary order in the absence of guidance, illustrating the operationalization of care as both survival and governance.
Conclusão
The study expands crisis management literature by theorizing improvisation as an act of biopolitical care. It contributes to organizational theory by emphasizing ethical agency and embodied knowledge in precarious contexts. For practitioners, it offers insights into how professionals mobilize micro-practices of leadership when formal systems collapse.
Contribuição / Impacto
This article introduces the concept of biopolitics of care to explain how frontline workers turned ethical judgment and improvisation into crisis response in Brazil’s only suspected Ebola case. It challenges traditional preparedness models by showing how organizational intelligence emerges from fragility. For managers, it offers a new logic of action: when systems fail, care improvisation becomes a form of leadership and a strategy for survival.
Referências Bibliográficas
Key references include Foucault (2008) on biopolitics, Mbembe (2019) on necropolitics, and Tronto (1993) on care ethics. Methodological grounding is based on Meihy & Alberti (2004) in oral history. The study also engages with Weick & Sutcliffe (2007) on high-reliability organizations, Teece et al. (1997) on dynamic capabilities, and Carrieri et al. (2017) on ordinary management in the Global South.