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As a major multi-departmental coordination mechanism in Chinese government and politics, the “leading group” has long been regarded as an effective institutional design to solve the coordination dilemma of bureaucracy. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of “leading-group failure” has appeared in more and more emergency management practices, and a large number of “working groups” and “working teams” have emerged. Existing research lacks systematic examination of these new phenomena, and especially lacks in-depth research on the internal mechanisms and applicable situations of them. Through a participatory observation of an emergency management work in W City, the authors conducted a single case analysis of two organizational debuggings in W City in an emergency management situation. After serious governance failures occurred in the early stages of emergency management. W City replaced the "leading group" with "working groups" and "working teams", and subsequently achieved significant improvements. Because the high- pressure work situation fully tests the organizational effectiveness of different organizational forms, it provides us with an observation perspective from a natural experiment. W City has a large population, a long emergency management cycle, clear organizational adjustment points, and significant contrast in the effects of pre- and post- treatment, making it a persuading example. Through multiple rounds of interviews with relevant staff in W City, as well as the collection of secondary data such as public data, news reports, policy documents, etc., this article has various sources of evidence. After forming the first draft of the research report, it was checked with the interviewees to meet the validity of the case-construction related conditions. This article defines the formal and informal forms of administrative knowledge and political authority, and uses this as a framework to analyze the types and applicable situations of the three mechanisms. The study believes that the "leading group" is power-oriented and is suitable for pioneering situations; the "working group" is task-oriented and is suitable for overall-planning situations; the "working team" is resource-oriented and is suitable for focal situations. Compared with existing research, this article expands on the following three aspects: first, this article enriches the theoretical discussion of the coordination mechanism literature with typology research, and focusing on two types of mechanism that have received little attention before especially by comparing them with the "leading group" in the same situation; secondly, this article brings Weber's bureaucracy theory back to the analytical framework of the coordination mechanism, trying to transcend the research perspective that taking collaborative governance as the opposite of bureaucracy; thirdly, this article combines relevant discussions on traditional Chinese political culture to propose formal and informal definitions of administrative knowledge and political authority, and transfers the tacit knowledge concept that has been widely discussed in the field of knowledge management to administrative work, and the nature of the position is also included in the perspective of political authority production, which expands the scope of interpretation of this concept. As a basic theory for understanding modern government, bureaucracy has experienced ups and downs along with the wave of administrative reform, while its relationship with the multi-departmental coordination mechanism has not been fully discussed at the theoretical level. The research in this article is instructive for understanding the "constancy" and "change" of bureaucracy in the new era, and helps to make targeted deployment according to the types and characteristics of the coordination mechanism in practical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]