The influence of political disagreements and corruption on state health leader turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil
ISSN: 1751-1879
Article publication date: 18 June 2024
Issue publication date: 30 September 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Governments faced formidable challenges in coordinating public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to enhance the understanding of effective organizational leadership during crises by investigating the factors influencing the turnover of health leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
Using primary data encompassing all appointments and dismissals of federal and state health secretaries, this paper conducted a quantitative analysis of the relational and reputational factors that contributed to leader turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper also examined whether leaders’ management and public health experience increase the duration of tenure.
Findings
States encountered significant challenges in retaining experienced and effective leadership during the health emergency, primarily due to political conflicts in policymaking and, to a lesser extent, allegations of corruption. Furthermore, leaders with expertise in public health were found to be less likely to be removed from office. However, managerial experience did not prolong the tenure of state health secretaries during the emergency.
Research limitations/implications
Since most health leaders have public health and management experience, the contributions of each factor to the duration of a secretary’s tenure are difficult to separate and analyze separately.
Practical implications
This study provides empirical insights into what factors drive health leader turnover during major health emergencies.
Social implications
During major health emergencies, health leaders often strongly disagree with elected officials on the response. This paper test how crisis leadership theories help explain state health leaders’ duration in one of the world’s largest public health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper find that policy disagreements contributed to significant turnover.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first that are aware of that uses novel primary data on public health executive leader characteristics and turnover causes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides empirical evidence contributing to the crisis leadership literature by examining health leader turnover in one of the world’s largest public health systems.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Erratum: It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article, Barberia, L.G., Masiero, G., Alves de Lima, I., Santana, L. and Moraes de Sousa, T.C. (2024), “The influence of political disagreements and corruption on state health leader turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil”, Leadership in Health Services, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-01-2024-0008, did not include the corrected Figure 4a and Table 3 in the article. This correction was missed by the production team during the typesetting process. This error has been corrected in the online version of the article. The publisher sincerely apologises to readers for any inconvenience caused.
The researchers thank Natalia de Paula Moreira, Marcela Zamudio, Vitória Lopes and Aryanne Alcântara for invaluable research assistance. This work was supported by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [grant numbers 2021/08772-9 and 2022/10997-1]. The funding received by the researchers did not directly contribute to the study design, data collection, analysis, data interpretation, manuscript writing and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Citation
Barberia, L.G., Masiero, G., Alves de Lima, I., Santana, L. and Moraes de Sousa, T.C. (2024), "The influence of political disagreements and corruption on state health leader turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 511-525. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-01-2024-0008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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