Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

In December of 2019 the World Health Organisation made known of a virus in the Chinese province of Wuhan. This virus would later be known as COVID-19 and spread across the globe. The virus would cause death, sickness, curfews, restrictions, and closed borders. This also had an effect on the thousands of swedes that were abroad with no means to travel back to Sweden. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Sweden has the responsibility of handling consular crises abroad and this became one of the most complex crises that the Ministry ever had to handle. Previous research claims that network-based command is more resilient against complexity and time pressure, the two main aspects of a complex crisis. As the complex crisis of COVID-19 was handled by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, a hierarchical organisation, it poses the question whether the capabilities of network-based command can be identified in the crisis management during COVID-19. By interviewing people that were present in the Ministry’s crisis management system during COVID-19 the study identifies both promoting and hindering factors for network-based command. The results show that it is possible to develop some conditions of network-based command in a hierarchical organisation, but the hindering factors affects the organisation as a whole and therefore hinders the development of network-based command in the organisation.