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The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

The paper sets forth and examines the assumptions underlying two global ideas – world class and best practices – and their application to (higher) education and health organizations. Our basic (ex-ante) assumption is that both sectors are influenced by organizational fields that embody these ideas. However, we also assume that these sectors differ, and thus, that one should find between sector variations in the influence of such ideas. The findings suggest that both sectors have been affected by hegemonic ideas, yet in rather different ways, and that these ideas, particularly the metrics being used, pose different challenges in the two sectors.

Adolescence is a time when a young person develops his or her identity, acquires greater autonomy and independence, experiments and takes risks and grows mentally and physically. To successfully navigate these changes, an accessible and health system when needed is essential.

We assessed the structure and content of national primary care services against these standards in the field of adolescent health services. The main criteria identified by adolescents as important for primary care are as follows: accessibility, staff attitude, communication in all its forms, staff competency and skills, confidential and continuous care, age appropriate environment, involvement in health care, equity and respect and a strong link with the community.

We found that although half of the Models of Child Health Appraised countries have adopted adolescent-specific policies or guidelines, many countries do not meet the current standards of quality health care for adolescents. For example, the ability to provide emergency mental health care or respond to life-threatening behaviour is limited. Many countries provide good access to contraception, but specialised care for a pregnant adolescent may be hard to find.

Access needs to be improved for vulnerable adolescents; greater advocacy should be given to adolescent health and the promotion of good health habits. Adolescent health services should be well publicised, and adolescents need to feel empowered to access them.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This article explores the range of responses available to international bureaucracies when confronted with demands made by their member states through the study of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the 1970s and 1980s. I show that the WHO bureaucracy successfully addressed the demands of developing countries for health policies compatible with a more equitable world economic order, but in a way that preserved the bureaucracy's own agenda and without upsetting the opposite coalition of wealthy countries. Drawing on insights from the sociology of organizations, this article shows that externally dependent international bureaucracies are able to preserve their autonomous agenda by strategically reframing countries’ demands before responding to them.

To underscore the significance of international health care management, we focus on three themes: the problem of global blindness; global health care challenges and opportunities; and learning from international health care management. The problem of global blindness highlights how health care managers’ inattentional blindness to competitors’ operational performance and market strategies lead to avoidable and expensive failures. To address global challenges and opportunities, health care organizations are employing two different strategies: (1) building and marketing a world-class health care facility internationally, and (2) organizing and integrating multinational health care operations. The first strategy exploits the medical-tourism market. The second strategy requires either multinational health care networks or transnational health care organizations. One of the lessons to be learned from international health care management is that an organization can create a meta-national competitive advantage. Another lesson is that by examining best practices from around the world, health care organizations can obtain new insights and become more innovative within their home markets. A corollary and third lesson is that while health care organizations can learn a great deal from examining international best clinical practices, sometimes the most important management lessons are lost in clinical translations. The fourth and last lesson is that worst cases – serious international management failures – offer perhaps the most valuable insights into the role of culture, complexity, and leadership for health care organizations.

In order to assess the state of health of Europe’s children, or to appraise the systems and models of healthcare delivery, data about children are essential, with as much precision and accuracy as possible by small group characteristic. Unfortunately, the experience of the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project and its scientists shows that this ideal is seldom met, and thus the accuracy of appraisal or planning work is compromised. In the project, we explored the data collected on children by a number of databases used in Europe and globally, to find that although the four quinquennial age bands are common, it is impossible to represent children aged 0–17 years as a legally defined group in statistical analysis. Adolescents, in particular, are the most invisible age group despite this being a time of life when they are rapidly changing and facing increasing challenges. In terms of measurement and monitoring, there is little progress from work of nearly two decades ago that recommended an information system, and no focus on the creation of a policy and ethical framework to allow collaborative analysis of the rich anonymised databases that hold real-world people-based data. In respect of data systems and surveillance, nearly all systems in European society pay lip service to the importance of children, but do not accommodate them in a practical and statistical sense.

Several international and supranational organizations have undertaken efforts to improve and standardize the measurement of disability in population-based surveys. Among these are the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Statistical Office of the European Commission, the United Nations Statistical Division, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, the World Health Organization, and Réseau sur l’Espérance de Vie en Santé Européennes. In this report their activities and recommendations are reviewed and examined from the viewpoint of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health.

This paper aims to: analyze the challenge of health services fragmentation; present the attributes of integrated health service delivery networks (IHSDNs); review lessons learned on integration; examine recent developments in selected countries; and discuss policy implications of implementing IHSDNs.

A literature review, expert meetings, and country consultations (national, subregional, and regional) in the Americas resulted in a set of consensus‐based essential attributes for implementing IHSDNs. The analysis of 11 country case studies on integration allowed for the identification of lessons learned.

Studies suggest that IHSDNs could improve health systems performance. Principal findings include: integration processes are difficult, complex, and long term; integration requires extensive systemic changes and a commitment by health workers, health service managers and policymakers; and, multiple modalities and degrees of integration can coexist within a system. The public policy objective is to propose a design that meets each system's specific organizational needs.

The analysis presented in this paper is qualitative.

Some policy implications for implementing IHSDNs are presented in the paper.

The research and evidence on integration remains limited. The paper expands the knowledge‐base on the topic, presenting lessons learned on integration and recent developments in selected countries, which can support integration efforts in the region.