The COVID‐19 Pandemic: What can we learn from past research in organizations and management?

• Author: Katie Bailey,Dermot Breslin
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12237

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 23, 3–6 (2021)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12237

The COVID-19 Pandemic: What can we

learn from past research in organizations

and management?

Katie Bailey and Dermot Breslin1

King’s Business School, King’s College London, Bush House, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG 1Management

School, Sheff‌ield University, Conduit Road, Sheff‌ield, S10 1FL

Corresponding author email: catherine.bailey@kcl.ac.uk

The ongoing COVID-19pandemic is having a profound impact on organizations across

the world, as businesses and societies face their greatest challenges for many decades.

Over the past 20 years, the International Journal of Management Reviews (IJMR)has

published many reviews of research that bring together the key f‌indings across impor-

tant bodies of research relevant to understanding how organizations might confront

grand challenges such as these. Ref‌lecting on this work, we have chosen a number of

recent reviewspublished in the journal which have relevanceboth for practitioners and

scholars in the current crisis. Weinvited the authors of these papers to offer some com-

ments, which we havedrawn from in the discussion below.

In the f‌irst article published in 2018, Anna John and

Thomas Lawton focus on the management of po-

litical risk from the perspective of state-owned and

private enterprises contemplating foreign direct in-

vestment. In the context of today’s global pandemic,

their recommendations remain relevant, for instance,

to organizations involved in aid operations. Such or-

ganizations transfer f‌inancial and non-f‌inancial re-

sources across borders, and an ability to navigate po-

litical risk is intrinsic to the successful completion

of their missions. Inherent in this risk is the need

to reconcile the urgency of delivering relief opera-

tions on the ground in-country with the need to re-

tain autonomy and avoid dependence on local po-

litical agents and geopolitical powers. The three ap-

proaches they advance to manage political risk are

highly relevant in the COVID-19 context (John and

Lawton, 2018). In particular, they note, “as polit-

ical environments in many countries have become

volatile and are destabilized by the pandemic and

its emergent economic and social fallout, the proac-

tive resources and capabilities approach may be the

best bet for the endurance of many organizations.

This article is the introduction for a virtual issue which can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/topic/vi- categories-

14682370/virtual-issues/14682370

By contrast, the institutional approach should be

used with caution. First, it might lead to withdrawal

from countries that have adopted stricter lockdown

regimes, such as the closure of frontiers for trav-

eling and tighter migration controls, to prevent the

further spread of the coronavirus. These are often

countries with challenging natural conditions (e.g.

Russia), as well as countries that have recently suf-

fered devastating natural disasters (e.g. the cyclones

Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique). Second, survival

through institutional embeddedness may be challeng-

ing now due to institutional liminality—the situation

where the existing institutional arrangements have

proved to be futile, but their substitutes are not yet

in place. Third, obedience to rules and regulations

is required but it is no longer suff‌icient for survival.

For example, as some governments introduced lock-

down measures, many or most of their businesses

and other organizations had to suspend operations.

Despite generous government support for employees

of these organizations in advanced economies such

as the UK and France, the availability of this sup-

port is time limited. Therefore, the passive reliance

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