Strengthening or Restricting? Explaining the Covid-19 Pandemic’s Configurational Effects on Companies’ Sustainability Strategies and Practices
基于非洲四国25家公司的定性数据，用模糊集定性比较分析识别出新冠疫情下公司强化或限制可持续发展响应的五种路径，揭示危机严重性、资源冗余和前期投资等因素的组态效应。
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.