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

Abstract

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.

COVID-19 and Management Scholarship: Lessons for Conducting Impactful Research

“…Hamann and colleagues (2024) examine the pandemic’s impact on the sustainability strategies of 25 companies in four African countries. They use cross-case comparison and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to identify two pathways associated with strengthening responses and restricting responses.…”

Unchaining supply chains: Transformative leaps toward regenerating social–ecological systems

“…In agriculture, for example, following the principle of poly‐rhythmicity avoids intensification practices that constrain livestock movement to accelerate the meat production cycle, with strong unintended consequences for social–ecological systems (e.g., EFSA Panel on Animal Health and Welfare, 2012). The poly‐rhythmicity principle generalizes to social systems, too; for example, managerial beliefs shaped around the importance of efficiency can inadvertently lead companies to invest too little time in relationship building and maintenance with local communities, eroding the resilience these relationships could afford (Cruze & Baker, 2023; Hamann et al, 2022), especially during difficult times like the COVID‐19 pandemic. The poly‐rhythmicity principle requires supply chain members to consider the simultaneous rhythms characterizing social–ecological systems and to make strategic, tactical, and operational decisions that align with such rhythmic patterns.…”