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This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
1
Crisis-driven digital transformation: Examining the
online university triggered by COVID-19
Christian Ravn Haslam
Aalborg University, Department of Politics and Society,
Centre for IS Management
E-mail: haslam@dps.aau.dk
Sabine Madsen*
Aalborg University, Department of Politics and Society,
Centre for IS Management
E-mail: sam@dps.aau.dk
Jeppe Agger Nielsen
Aalborg University, Department of Politics and Society,
Centre for IS Management
E-mail: agger@dps.aau.dk
* Corresponding author
Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic has major negative consequences for health
and economy. At the same time, the crisis paves the way for innovation. In the
university sector, societal measures implemented to curb the spread of Covid-
19 have made all teaching activities 100% digital, in effect creating the online
university overnight. In this paper, we present an empirical account of this
extreme situation. Based on an explorative case study of how it was possible
for the social science faculty at a Danish university to undergo accelerated
digital transformation, we identify three salient themes that capture the
immediate organizational response: (1) leveraging existing resources, (2)
intensified communication and (3) re-organizing core activities. We contribute
with preliminary empirical insights into the practicalities of accelerating digital
transformation, especially the importance of mobilizing the organization’s
existing resources and knowledge as well as the organizational actors’
helpfulness and willingness to share, learn, innovate and self-organize.
Theoretically, we propose and substantiate the concept of accelerated digital
transformation and present a model that summarizes the identified themes.
Keywords: COVID-19; Digital Transformation; Accelerated; Case study;
Digital teaching; Crisis-driven; Online; University.
This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
2
1 Introduction
In both research and practice, digital transformation is receiving much attention and has
been coined as the most relevant technology-oriented phenomenon of our times (Wessel,
Baiyere, Ologeanu-Taddei, Cha & Jensen, 2020). However, a transformation process
“that engenders a qualitatively different organization” (Besson & Rowe, 2012, p. 103) is
typically difficult, time-consuming, and incremental. Yet, the Covid-19 pandemic is
currently causing many organizations to undergo unexpected, accelerated digital
transformation to manage the crisis and be able to maintain their activities. This is
especially true of the university sector where many universities have digitalized all their
teaching activities to cope with the situation.
In Denmark, the societal measures implemented to curb the spread of Covid-19,
including the temporary lockdown of physical public sector facilities—starting medio
March 2020—have forced university managers, professors, IT staff and students to skip
the expected gradual transformation process and make all teaching activities 100%
digital. This extraordinary situation means that resistance to change and discussions about
complicated matters have for a moment vanished in favor of a trial-and-error approach to
online teaching. Using the Faculty of Social Sciences at a Danish university as case, we
focus on accelerated digital transformation of core organizational activities. The selected
faculty was, literally overnight, totally digitized in the wake of the Covid-19 situation. It
therefore provides a unique opportunity to study accelerated digital transformation and
organizational responsiveness, where carefully planned digital transformation strategies
and processes were replaced with immediate action and emergent organizing. Hence, we
address the following research question: How can organizations successfully cope with
crisis-driven accelerated digital transformation?
Accelerated digital transformation of university level teaching as a crisis
management response to the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes an “extreme case”
(Flyvbjerg, 2006). By studying digital transformation in an extreme situation, we
contribute to extant research with new empirical insights as well as theorizing about
‘accelerated digital transformation’ of core organizational activities. For organizations,
accelerated digital transformation may become increasingly relevant in a more and more
volatile world. Moreover, insight into the practicalities of handling accelerating digital
transformation is relevant across sectors and industries as a means of stimulating digital
innovation in organizations. As a theoretical concept, accelerated digital transformation
refers to the ability of actors at all organizational levels to rapidly, collaboratively, and
individually respond to change and crisis by performing the management activities that
relate to their organizational roles.
2 Background
Digital transformation is about major changes (Liu et al., 2011; Besson & Rowe, 2012) to
business models, activities, and competencies to exploit the opportunities offered by
digital technology in a strategic way (Kaltum et al., 2016; Vial 2019). Extant literature
has focused on maturity models and stages of digital transformation (Valdez-de-Leon,
2016), strategies and strategic options for digital transformation (Bharadwaj et al., 2013;
Hess et al., 2016), organizational capabilities (Orlandi, 2016), CIO roles and leadership
competencies (Weill & Woerner, 2013; Singh & Hess, 2017), how traditional firms
navigate digital transformation (Sebastian et al., 2017), and how digital transformation
change culture (Karimi & Walter, 2015) and organizational identity (Wessel et. al. 2020).
Svahn et al. (2017) suggest that successful digital transformation requires fundamentally
rethinking the organization, while also keeping the core business functioning efficiently.
A commonality in most existing studies is that digital transformation is viewed as a
challenging organizational change process loaded with tensions (Baiyere, Hannu &
Tapanainen, 2020) that unfold in certain stages (Valdez-de-Leon, 2016), is likely to meet
high-degree of employee resistance, and often takes long time. While appreciating these
insights as foundational for understanding digital transformation, the current research is
designed to contribute new insight on crisis-driven digital transformation as an
accelerated change process, which seems to short-circuit existing ways of understanding
digital transformation as long term development consisting of certain prerequisite steps or
stages.
To inform our framing of the new phenomenon of crisis-driven accelerated digital
transformation, we turn to the field of crisis management research. The argument for this
is two-fold. First, the need for accelerated digital transformation arose due to a crisis
situation, namely the Covid-19 lockdown, which caused a major breakdown in
established physical ways of working, not just in this case but in organizations around the
world. Second, the literature on crisis management offers valuable insight into how
organizations can handle situations that require immediate organizational response—
something which the literature on digital transformation does not focus on to the same
extent, as mentioned above.
In general, organizational crises are described as low-probability, high-consequence
events, characterized by ambiguity with regard to cause, effect and resolution as well as
by a need for swift decisions and actions that mitigate the crisis (Pearson & Clair, 1998).
Organizational response to crisis is considered successful when the organization is able to
maintain or regain the momentum of core activities, the losses of internal and external
stakeholders are minimized and organizational learning occurs so that lessons are
transferred to future incidents (ibid). While the list of potential organizational crisis is
virtually unending (Mitroff et al., 1987), we concentrate on externally triggered
accidents, as in the case of Covid-19.
Crisis management scholars have identified five phases—or core activities—for
managing an organizational crisis: (a) signal detection which requires managers to sense
early warnings that announce the possibility of a crisis, (b) preparation and prevention
means that managers are expected to avert crises and prepare, should the crisis occur, (c)
damage control, or coping, where managers take action to handle the immediate impact
and stop the crisis from expanding to other areas of the organization or its environment,
(d) recovery, where managers are responsible for designing and implementing short- and
long-term plans to help resume organizational operations, and (e) learning where
managers encourage examination of the critical lessons from the crisis (Coombs, 1999;
Mitroff & Pearson, 1993; Pheng et al. 1999; Wooten & James, 2008).
Since this study concentrates on accelerated digital transformation as the response
for dealing with the occurrence of the Covid-19 crisis, it covers the abovementioned
phase c and d. As such, we are particularly interested in the literature’s recommendations
for damage control, coping strategies and short-term plans. To this end, the literature
This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
4
emphasizes that managers need to focus on the following: (1) swift decision making and
the ability to see the crisis not only as a threat but also as an opportunity (Brockner and
James 2008), (2) communication to shape stakeholders perceptions (Coombs, 1995;
James & Wooten, 2006; Seeger et al., 2003), including attempt to restore calm, inspire
confidence, and show empathy in their messaging and (3) adequate risk-taking, by
avoiding unnecessary risk, while ensuring creative thinking and innovation that can help
the organization strategize novel ways for overcoming the crisis (Wooten & James 2008).
In summary, organizational crisis requires fast response and a number of nontrivial
activities to deal with unusual circumstances. We use these insights as a starting point to
inspire our empirical case study design, particularly with regard to focus areas and
vocabulary, and based on our empirical results we develop a conceptual model that
delineates defining elements of crisis-driven accelerated digital transformation.
3 Research Method
To explore accelerated digital transformation triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, we
conducted an explorative case study (Yin, 2014) at a social science faculty at a Danish
university. Aalborg University (AAU) is a public university founded in 1974 with its
main campus located in the city of Aalborg in the northern part of Denmark. The
university has five faculties covering a wide range of subjects within engineering,
medicine, information technology, design, humanities, and social sciences. The university
awards bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhD degrees and has more than 23.000
students.
In this research study, we focus on the Faculty of Social Sciences that made all
teaching activities 100% online by medio March 2020 and the rest of the semester caused
by the Covid-19 situation. Management of the Faculty of Social Sciences consists of the
dean, the associate dean for research, the associate dean for education and the heads of
the four departments at the faculty; (1) Department of Sociology and Social Work, (2)
Department of Politics and Society, (3) Department of Business and Management, and
(4) Department of Law. To focus our investigation, we concentrate on the two former
departments, which are similar in budget and size with approx. 100 scholars at each
department.
During the past five years, digitalization of teaching activities has become
increasingly important at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In the wake of Aalborg
University’s overall digitalization strategy (2016 – 2021) a range of initiatives have been
taking at the Faculty of Social Sciences, including employment of a digitalization
consultant in 2019, and launching a process towards development of a digital
transformation strategy for the faculty. The Dean explained how this process moved
slowly forward, loaded with intense discussions and resistance to change among some
employee groups. He further explained how the unexpected Covid-19 situation forced a
digital transformation of teaching activities, which surpassed his “wildest imaginations”.
As such, the Faculty of Social Sciences provides a unique context for examining
accelerated digital transformation.
3.1 Data Collection
We follow the recommendation from Yin (2014) to include multiple sources of data in
our case study, as summarized in Table 1 & 2. First, we conducted 28 semi-structured
interviews (Kvale, 2008) with managers, professors, digitalization staff and students
distributed equally across the two departments. All interviews took place during the first
four weeks of the Covid-19 response period—medio March to medio April 2020. In this
way, our data covers a “real time” investigation of the early stage of how the Social
Science Faculty coped with accelerated digitalization in a crisis. We held all interviews
online (Lo Iacono, Symonds & Brown, 2016) using Microsoft Teams or Skype for
Business. Interviews lasted one hour on average. The interview guide was adapted to the
four stakeholder groups, but all guides covered three broad questions concerning how the
faculty coped with accelerated digital transformation: (a) which online teaching activities
have been initiated during the Covid-19 period and why? (b) how do key organizational
actors experience online teaching—its suddenness, benefits, disadvantages and
unintended consequences? (c) how is the rapid transformation of university teaching
supported by the management team? All interviews were recorded and subsequently
transcribed verbatim by a group of student assistants using online transcription software
from Konch´s Speech-to-Text platform. All interviews were conducted, and subsequent
recordings and transcriptions, stored in compliance with GDPR standards.
Table 1: Data Sources - Interviews
Actor Group
#
Description
Application
Managers
Dean (1)
Associate Dean (1)
Head of Depart. (2)
Vice Head of Depart. (2)
Entire top management
team
Establishing rich
insight into how
management
responded to the
crisis and how they
communicated to
professors and
students.
Professors
Full Professors (2)
Associate Professors (5)
Assistant Professors (3)
Professors with online
teaching during Covid-19
period. Equally divided
across the two depart-
ments. Five females and
five males.
Acquiring detailed
information about
online teaching
activities during
Covid-19. Its
benefits,
disadvantages, and
consequences.
Digitization
Staff
Digitalization consultant (1)
Head IT service (1)
Key digitalization staff at
the faculty of social sci-
ences
Triangulation of
insights obtained
from managers,
professors and
students. Adding new
insights on the
technical aspect of
online teaching in
crisis.
Students
Bachelor level (6)
Master level (4)
Equally divided across
the two departments. Five
females and five males
Detailed information
about how online
teaching is
experienced from a
student perspective.
This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
6
Second, we included a range of documents. Due to the extreme situation, the
management team at the university produced several formal announcements, procedure
descriptions, and guidelines on online teaching for employees and students readily
available for analysis. All documents were archived and stored in accordance with GDPR
regulations.
Table 2: Data Sources - Documents
Type
Description
Application
E-mail communication
Digitalization strategies
PowerPoint presentations
Meeting minutes
Student evaluations
122 e-mails with Covid-19
communication to professors
and students from managers
(11th March to 20th April
2020)
23 documents (423 pages)
Background information on
digitalization strategy prior to
Covid-19 as well as insight
into the details of the
communicative response to
the crisis.
3.2 Data Analysis
We applied Braun and Clarke’s (2006) phases of thematic analysis to move from raw
data to theoretical insight. The approach was used to code the text without using an initial
a priori coding template, because the purpose of this study is to open-mindedly explore
accelerated digital transformation rather than testing a certain theoretical point of view.
Firstly, we read the transcribed interviews and available documents and noted down ideas
of how the Faculty of Social Sciences was coping with crisis-driven and accelerated
digital transformation in a process of get-ting familiar with the overall dataset. Secondly,
we conducted open coding to generate the initial codes. Next, the whole data set was
grouped together under similar codes and then sorted into three overall themes. We then
reviewed, refined, and defined the themes. In the third stage, we visualized the themes in
a model that captures key concepts of relevance for how organizations successfully can
cope with accelerated digital transformation. To ensure the quality of the data analysis,
we independently analyzed the data then discussed and corroborating our findings and
used ‘member checking’ with our key contacts at the faculty.
4 Findings
On Wednesday, the 11th March 2020 in the evening, the Danish government announced
that all non-critical public sector institutions, such as universities, would be locked down
to stop the spread of the coronavirus. This created a sharp before and after in the social
science faculty’s approach to teaching, as all teaching activities were digitalized with
immediate effect. In this section, we present three salient themes that help us understand
how it was possible for the social science faculty to become an online university so
rapidly. The themes are: (1) leveraging existing resources, (2) intensified communication
and (3) re-organizing core activities.
4.1 Leveraging existing resources
The social science faculty was able to shift from physical to online teaching over night by
leveraging existing digital technologies and knowledge resources. The university had
already invested in several technologies that either were explicitly aimed at or had the
potential to support online teaching, such as the organization’s learning management
system Moodle, skype-for-business, MS Teams, Panopto, etc. However, before the
Covid-19 lockdown period, these technologies were primarily used to support physical
teaching, which in turn meant that only basic functionality (such as, e.g., course lists,
calendar, and file sharing in Moodle), were used. Yet, a digital infrastructure was in
place (including support websites, instruction videos, online tutorials, etc.) and
immediately, after the lockdown period started, the professors began to explore and use
the functionality of these technologies to a much larger extent, i.e. for live-streaming of
lectures, video-recorded lectures, PowerPoint slides with voice-over, online chat-sessions
between professors and students, for project supervision meetings as well as quizzes,
tests, and online oral exams, including PhD defenses. Paramount for enabling full
digitalization of all teaching activities was also that the students could be counted on to
have their own computers as well as good internet connections, thereby creating a strong
infrastructure on both the university and student side.
In addition to the digital infrastructure, all organizational actors, from managers to
students, had a high level of digital maturity that could be leveraged for online teaching
and learning. However, the interviewees report that they did not necessarily realize this
before the Covid-19 period, because their digital skills stemmed from other areas. For
example, many researchers, particularly the more senior researchers, have experience
using digital technologies to collaborate with and maintain relations to international
and/or distributed research groups. Most were able to take advantage of this experience
for delivering digital teaching and, particularly, for online student supervision. In
addition, most junior researchers have (recently) participated in mandatory university
pedagogy courses of which at least one focuses on applying digital technologies in
education. Our interviewees describe that they did not feel they had reason to apply these
technologies prior to Covid-19, because physical teaching was the primary and culturally
most valued means of delivery at the social science faculty. However, they were grateful
that they had been introduced to and had some hand-on experience with the
organization’s portfolio of educational platforms and tools during the pedagogical course.
The junior researchers state that knowing that they had some skills with digital teaching
removed much of the trepidation they would otherwise feel having to adopt unfamiliar
technologies very rapidly. Similarly, the students have digital skills from many areas of
life, including experience with having to navigate numerous administrative and
educational systems and platforms in relation to their university program.
4.2 Intensified communication
Already Wednesday the 11th March 2020 in the evening after the Danish government’s
announcement, managers and professors started to communicate with and to each other
about what had just happened and how to respond to the situation. Over the next weeks,
there was an un-precedented amount of information dissemination at and between all
organizational levels. This included email communication from deans, study leaders,
study boards, etc. with guidelines and rules for how to deal with the new reality.
Our document study shows that the communication was frequent with several
emails each day, in an attempt to inform about changes in the Danish governmental
This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
8
announcements, organizationally available digital technologies and support resources as
well as managerial decisions, e.g., about preferred modes of teaching (i.e. synchronous or
asynchronous), how to conduct online exams, etc. Moreover, several existing ideas and
ideals concerning digitalization of university teaching were reiterated across the faculty.
In addition, several managers at faculty and department level were already involved in
digitalization work groups and were quick to push existing ideas and information to staff
and students. In addition, emergency response teams were established, with
daily/frequent meetings among IT staff and managers as well as involvement of students
and student surveys for identifying emerging challenges and informing about how to deal
with them.
Some of the emerging challenges that had to be managed concerned: (1) the
students’ access to empirical data and secure GDPR compliant data collection via digital
platforms during the Covid-19 lockdown, (2) rules and regulations for ensuring valid
virtual exams with regard to both the students’ legal certainty but also to avoid exam
fraud as well as (3) how to help both employees and students cope with anxiety and
loneliness due to working/studying from home. Managers were highly aware of the latter
aspect and aimed to communicate their understanding for the staffs’ and students’
different life situations and resulting variation in time and ability to adopt to digital
teaching as well as the challenging aspects of social distancing.
Supplementing the frequent dissemination of formal information, there was much
informal knowledge sharing of tips and tricks about “the do’s and don’ts” of digital
teaching among colleagues via emails, rapidly created Moodle-sites or Teams in MS
Teams. In general, the willingness to share knowledge and help colleagues that felt
uncertain on how to get started with digital teaching or how do a specific thing was
enormous. As one of the informant’s state: “the most important thing has actually been
the sharing and help from colleagues”.
The knowledge sharing also covered a hyper awareness of material, for example
from social media channels, that might be relevant for oneself, one’s colleagues and/or
students. An example of this was a list of references about methods for and advantages
and disadvantages of online data collection, which was posted on LinkedIn by a UK
researcher and subsequently picked up and shared among the professors and students that
participated in our study.
4.3 Re-organizing core activities
Immediately after the Covid-19 lockdown, it was decided at faculty level to avoid
disrupting teaching schedules by immediately digitalizing all teaching activities. Faculty
and department managers report being apprehensive about this decision as, prior to the
Covid-19 situation, initiatives towards increased digital teaching had been met with
significant resistance, leading to a voluntary strategy for adoption to avoid a push back
from teaching staff. The resistance towards digital teaching, at the university in general
including the Social Science Faculty, stems from a culture where problem-based learning
and dialogue with the students are highly valued and constitutive of the organizational
identity; resulting in the common assumption that mediated interaction with students is
pedagogically and didactically inferior to face-to-face interaction. However, as a response
to the Covid-19 crisis, management chose to push for rapid digitalization, supporting this
decision with the intensified communication described above. Mainly, by making it clear
that experimentation was encouraged and that it was acceptable that some experiments
would be less successful than others. To the managers relief - and surprise - this strategy
worked well. Almost all professors began using available digital technologies
immediately and many have spent a great deal of time and effort repeatedly
experimenting with these technologies and sharing experiences with each other.
Apparently shedding previous inhibitions or reservations.
Initially, most professors approached the new situation by trying to emulate their
existing practices on digital platforms. Almost all reported that this was generally a lot
easier than they had expected and, therefore, their focus quickly shifted towards
translation rather than simple emulation encompassing digital didactics as well as the
digital platforms themselves. This is illustrated through the following observations:
1. Initially professors spent a great deal of time experimenting on a lecture-to-
lecture basis, trying new platforms and approaches successively with nothing
taken for granted. Although students have been extremely patient and
understanding, they report that the main (negative) impact for them had little to
do with the digitalization of the lectures and more to do with the lack of stability
and predictability surrounding the practicalities of their courses. E.g. which
platforms would be used, when materials would be available and how to prepare
for a lecture.
2. Technical normalcy arrived much sooner that most had expected. The
mechanics of using digital tools has been less of an issue than most dared hope
for. It has also become clear that complicated and advanced technical solutions
do not necessarily lead to better teaching, learning experiences and outcomes.
Consequently, we now see an emergent tendency for professors to settle on
simpler technical solutions (i.e. the simplest solution available that works) and
focus more on didactical experimentation within the boundaries these solutions
provide. All professors in our study expressed an interest in increased
knowledge sharing about digital didactics. Both formally, in the form of best
practices gathered and put forward by management, and informally among
colleagues.
3. Didactically, there are many contextual factors which must suddenly be
considered during lockdown. The type and availability of physical workspaces,
access to high-quality IT equipment, high-speed internet connections, IT-
Support and not least personal and family considerations such as having to home
school children affect professors and students alike and have a significant
impact on productivity. Therefore, empathic understanding for everyone’s
specific situation becomes vital when choosing between asynchronous and
synchronous forms of teaching, assignment deadlines, group tasks and so on.
Experimentation has far from subsided and there are still lively discussions and
knowledge sharing concerning the practicalities of various tools and platforms. This
continuous reflection is contributing to a gradual shift in focus from technically driven
emulation of existing practices towards translation of practice from an analog to a digital
context. The shift towards digital didactics is not unexpected, however, the speed with
which it seems to be occurring stands in stark contrast to the more moderate pace of
previous digitalization initiatives, indicating that a relatively small amount of motivated
collective experience could be enough to overcome initial trepidation.
This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
10
5 Concluding Remarks
In this research-in-progress paper, we have examined accelerated digital transformation.
Empirically, we have shown how it was possible for the Social Science Faculty at a
Danish university to undergo accelerated digital transformation, which shifted the method
of delivery from primarily physical to 100% online teaching, essentially within a 24-hour
time period - something which all organizational members considered impossible just a
few days before it became reality. Figure 1 summarizes the three empirically identified
themes, and associated sub-themes, for answering the question of how the organization
successfully coped with crisis-driven accelerated digital transformation.
Figure 1 Empirical themes defining the concept of accelerated digital transformation
Three key insights for understanding what accelerated digital transformation entails and
requires stand out in this study. First of all, the organization already possessed a high
level of organizational readiness for digital teaching, because a digital infrastructure with
relevant technologies and support material was in place and because managers, professors
and students had experience with these, and/or similar, technologies, and therefore had
enough familiarity and digital maturity for using the technologies for teaching purposes.
Yet, in this case, the high level of organizational readiness was unrecognized by all actors
prior to the Covid-19 lockdown, among other things, due to a planned longer strategic
process and the expected need to overcome resistance to change. However, when an
immediate crisis-response became necessary the existing, slowly accumulated digital and
knowledge resources were ready to be leveraged for accelerated transformation.
Secondly, a key finding is that the accelerated digital transformation was possible
because actors at all organizational levels actively participated in the transformation
process by performing crisis management activities relating to their organizational roles,
i.e. in collective crisis management. Managers and emergency response team members
partook in on-going issues identification, decision-making and information
dissemination, while other actors, such as professors and students, went out of their way
to experiment with different digital teaching formats, with unusual patience and emphatic
understanding for each other’s situations, as well as a willingness to share experiences,
improvement suggestions and tips and tricks with each other.
Thirdly, the organizational learning about digital teaching was enormous, because
all actors, from managers to students, were engaged in the same types of collective
experimentation and with much more frequent feedback loops than usual. The Social
Science Faculty is typically characterized by numerous actors participating in many
different unrelated research projects and teaching activities, thereby creating less than
optimal conditions for alignment of activities and shared learning. However, in this case,
the Covid-19 crisis put everybody on the same path, thereby making information
dissemination, knowledge sharing and individual and organizational learning both
necessary and possible.
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This paper was presented at The ISPIM Innovation Conference – Innovating in Times of Crisis,
7-10 June 2020.
Event Proceedings: LUT Scientific and Expertise Publications: ISBN 978-952-335-466-1
12
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