Governmental Transformation in the Era of the Post Pandemic: Analyzing the Impacts of the Pandemic on Organizational Cultural Change in Government

Abstract

Using Cameron and Quinn’s competing values framework, we examined if organizational culture of government has substantially changed after experiencing the pandemic. We analyzed the data from Korean local governments. The findings show that the hierarchy culture emphasizing formal rules and internal control has decreased before the pandemic, but such desirable change has almost stopped after the upsurge of the pandemic. But the adhocracy culture valuing innovativeness, and employee empowerment has been stagnant before the pandemic, but rather has decreased to the lower level after the pandemic. Proper leadership will be important to lead organizational cultural changes to the desirable direction.