On the inability of the EU to vaccinate its population-an annoying OD perspective

The media is full of stories as to why the European Union has failed to vaccinate its population against Covid 19. I am adding on one more.

My unique vantage point on the EU vaccine crisis stems from looking thru the lenses of an OD practitioner with (I hope) relevant experience in global organizations. As usual, I’ll keep it short and answer comments and queries that readers leave in the relevant section below.

Mergers take an awful long time to heal and as such, the European Union is still naturally experiencing severe post-merger integration issues. Post-merger organizations make decisions slowly because the centres of power are not developed enough to make coherent decisions. As a result, post-merger organizations suffer from decisional constipation, with key issues stuck in the system because no one is quite strong enough to push decisions thru even after these decisions have been made.

Post merger organizations are larger, but they cannot yet leverage their size. Their size becomes a major liability because it slows them down until they figure out how it all works, which can and does take  generations.

Procurement and deployment, when left in the hands of bureaucrats, becomes self-serving, because there is no one powerful client who has to be pleased and/or no dictator holding a gun to your head. Thus, negotiations go on for ever because the sense of urgency is lacking. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more dangerous to a project than a self-serving bureaucracy immune to immense pressure from a powerful stakeholder.

Values prevalent in the major EU countries are liberal, with lots of slogans like about “no one is safe until we are all safe”. When these values impact a rigid bureaucracy and an organization with weak ultimate stakeholder pressure, another crushing blow is dealt to an effect coping strategy. So what’s wrong with these values, one may ask? To be honest, lots is wrong. Demand creates supply; central planning creates shortages. The Soviet Union taught that lesson very well. The strong help the weak because they are strong. You put on your child’s emergency mask on an airplane only after put on your own, otherwise you both die. Strong healthy nations can export vaccines only when they themselves no longer feel threatened. That’s common sense, except that neither common sense nor value consistency is common during post-merger integration.

When Mr. Yu asks his supplier, Mr. McGraw from whom he buys from millions of dollars, to hire his good-for-nothing-son, McGraw thinks Yu is corrupt. Yu thinks McGraw is thankless.

But Yu is right; favours do work, when they are mutually agreed to. As a matter of fact, favours work much faster than do negotiated contracts. If I were Italian, or Spanish, or Greek, I would prefer my procurer had pockets full of money to better leverage pressure (bribe) a vaccine supplier, rather than a book of procurement rules written by some clerk who wants to follow process and be “fair”, and immune from stakeholder pressure. 

Is this crisis a defining moment which will speed up the post merger integration of the EU? Well that’s another post, and it’s a crap shot at this point. Too early to call. It depends how many bodies will pile up and how ruinous the economy becomes within the nation states composing the EU. 

 

 

 

 

 

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3 thoughts on “On the inability of the EU to vaccinate its population-an annoying OD perspective

  1. Very interesting take on the EU as a post-merger organization that is still struggling to come together as a unified whole…and may never actually do so as long as each piece part (e.g. Greece, Spain, Italy etc) maintains its own identity.

  2. Interesting perspective, Allon, & of course you’re much closer than we are over here, so likely have greater insight.

    However, I wonder about a basic premise. My understanding is that the EU was never intended to be a “full merger” but rather more of a trade confederation.

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