ABSTRACT
Research interest in extreme contexts was growing before the COVID‐19 pandemic and has intensified since. The climate crisis, significant geo‐political conflict, political polarization and upheaval, and economic/financial crises that present existential challenges to organizations have all contributed to rising interest in extreme‐context research. COVID‐19 itself has generated an enormous body of research across all sub‐fields of management. However, the substantive, methodological and conceptual implications of this large volume of research remain unclear. In this introduction to the British Journal of Management COVID‐19 Online Virtual Issue, we describe and analyse COVID‐19 research so far published in the British Journal of Management. The Journal was proactive in seeing the profound implications of COVID‐19 for management research and practice, issuing an early call for contributions, and publishing several exploratory commentaries as early as July 2020. In this paper, we situate COVID‐19 research within the broader extreme‐context research, analyse contributions made so far, and build upon an extended taxonomy of extreme contexts to suggest ways for future research to generate further impactful insights.
ABSTRACT
Research interest in extreme contexts was growing before the COVID-19 pandemic and has intensified since. The climate crisis, significant geo-political conflict, political polarization and upheaval, and economic/financial crises that present existential challenges to organizations have all contributed to rising interest in extreme-context research. COVID-19 itself has generated an enormous body of research across all sub-fields of management. However, the substantive, methodological and conceptual implications of this large volume of research remain unclear. In this introduction to the British Journal of Management COVID-19 Online Virtual Issue, we describe and analyse COVID-19 research so far published in the British Journal of Management. The Journal was proactive in seeing the profound implications of COVID-19 for management research and practice, issuing an early call for contributions, and publishing several exploratory commentaries as early as July 2020. In this paper, we situate COVID-19 research within the broader extreme-context research, analyse contributions made so far, and build upon an extended taxonomy of extreme contexts to suggest ways for future research to generate further impactful insights.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is profoundly affecting almost all aspects of economic and social life globally. Governments have closed borders, banned mass gatherings, and enforced social distancing, generating a new normal for businesses and individual citizens. Measures taken to protect public health have threatened the global economy, necessitating economic stimulus in most countries and reconfiguring the role of business in society. Will the role of business in society return to normal after COVID-19, or will it be reconfigured in enduring and impactful ways? We use Alexander's (2018, 2019) theory of "societalization" to examine how socially disruptive extreme events affect the role of business in society. To address this, we apply societalization to the revelatory example of COVID-19 and evaluate its impact on society. Our analysis of the societalization of COVID-19 in the United States shows that concern regarding pandemic disease has moved from the governmental inside to the civic outside, placing strain on society and leading to regulatory response and a significant societal backlash. We discuss three scenarios regarding the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the role of business in society, suggest that societalization provides useful insights into other socially disruptive extreme events, and identify implications for future business and society research.
ABSTRACT
This study examines the role played by Australian human resource (HR) managers in shaping organizational responses to the Covid-19 pandemic from the perspective of paradox theory. We argue that the Covid-19 crisis triggered a ?societal paradox? ? protecting lives and the economy ? that cascaded to organizations of all types. While studies suggest paradoxes cross levels of analysis, little is known regarding organizational responses to a societal paradox entailing interdependent and yet contradictory demands between socially significant objectives. We focus on HR managers because of their key role in providing Covid-19 advice and support. Using a combination of cross-sectional survey data (n = 680) and detailed semi-structured interviews (n = 43), we examine variations in HR managers? experience of, and responses to, organizational tensions generated by societal paradox. We find that HR managers play a key role in shaping whether organizational responses ?replicate? the initial societal paradox, or ?magnify? existing latent paradoxical tensions in the organization. We show how applying a societal lens adds insight to paradox theory, elucidate the HR-related mechanisms that underpin variations in organizational experiences/responses and produce an inductive model to guide future studies.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic threatens both lives and livelihoods. To reduce the spread of the virus, governments have introduced crisis management interventions that include border closures, quarantines, strict social distancing, marshalling of essential workers and enforced homeworking. COVID-19 measures are necessary to save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people within society, and yet in parallel they create a range of negative everyday effects for already marginalized people. Likely unintended consequences of the management of the COVID-19 crisis include elevated risk for workers in low-paid, precarious and care-based employment, over-representation of minority ethnic groups in case numbers and fatalities, and gendered barriers to work. Drawing upon feminist ethics of care, I theorize a radical alternative to the normative assumptions of rationalist crisis management. Rationalist approaches to crisis management are typified by utilitarian logics, masculine and militaristic language, and the belief that crises follow linear processes of signal detection, preparation/prevention, containment, recovery and learning. By privileging the quantifiable - resources and measurable outcomes - such approaches tend to omit considerations of pre-existing structural disadvantage. This article contributes a new theorization of crisis management that is grounded in feminist ethics to provide a care-based concern for all crisis affected people.
ABSTRACT
The spread of COVID-19 acutely challenges and affects not just economic markets, demographic statistics and healthcare systems, but indeed also the politics of organizing and becoming in a new everyday life of academia emerging in our homes. Through a collage of stories, snapshots, vignettes, photos and other reflections of everyday life, this collective contribution is catching a glimpse of corona-life and its micro-politics of multiple, often contradicting claims on practices as many of us live, work and care at home. It embodies concerns, dreams, anger, hope, numbness, passion and much more emerging amongst academics from across the world in response to the crisis. As such, this piece manifests a shared need to - together, apart - enact and explore constitutive relations of resistance, care and solidarity in these dis/organizing times of contested spaces, identities and agencies as we are living-working-caring at home during lockdowns.