Strengthening or Restricting? Explaining the Covid-19 Pandemic’s Configurational Effects on Companies’ Sustainability Strategies and Practices

Autor: Ralph Hamann, Alecia Sewlal, Neeveditah Pariag-Maraye, Judy Muthuri, Kenneth Amaeshi, Ijeoma Nwagwu, Jenny Soderbergh
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Hamann, R, Sewlal, A, Pariag-Maraye, N, Muthuri, J, Amaeshi, K, Nwagwu, I & Soderbergh, J 2022, ' Strengthening or restricting? Explaining the Covid-19 pandemic’s configurational effects on companies’ sustainability strategies and practices ', Business & Society . https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221134100
ISSN: 1552-4205
0007-6503
DOI: 10.1177/00076503221134100
Popis: We explore the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on companies’ sustainability strategies and practices. Prior research has identified a number of factors that shape such effects, including crisis severity, resource slack, and prior investments, but their interactions have not been given much attention. We thus collected qualitative data on 25 companies in four African countries, which we analyzed inductively and iteratively through cross-case comparison and with fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. We identify two pathways associated with strengthening responses (“building on strengths” and “governance gap-filling”) and three associated with restricting responses (“hard hit,” “low-road business-as-usual,” and “bunkering down”). Our findings enhance our understanding of organizational responses to crises by attending to configurational effects, by elaborating the role of prior sustainability investments, and by foregrounding the relevance of governance contexts. We describe implications for future research and managers, investors, and sustainability initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.
Databáze: OpenAIRE