Impact of coronavirus pandemic on small businesses: A qualitative exploratory case study

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted small business entrepreneurs in the USA. The coronavirus pandemic started in China, spread across the world, and caused unprecedented health crises and financial and economic disruptions (Brijesh et al., 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic impacted many small businesses leading to severe liquidity problems and substantial financial losses (Williams & Kayaoglu, 2020). The U.S. government developed micro and macroeconomic recovery plans and strategies that focused on the economic revival interventions, boosting national cash flow, increase in spending, and consumption (Thorbecke et al., 2020). The participants in this study were purposefully sampled from the population of 1,000 small businesses in the USA, provided by Data Axle USA. Two data sources were an open-ended questionnaire/survey instrument and an archival documents review. The archival documents were downloaded from the NSBA website. Data analysis was done using Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis process (Ayre & McCaffery, 2022). From the thematic analysis, six themes emerged (a) Supply, Demand, and Trade Deficit Affected Revenue Stream;(b) Trade and Revenue Deficits Led to Business Rightsizing and Closures;(c) Government Help and Small Business Loans;(d) Transition to Internet, Virtual, and Online Business to Survive;(e) Retrenchment and Redundancy Reduction;and (f) Need for Awareness and Preparedness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

How COVID-19 informs business sustainability research: It's time for a systems perspective

In this essay, we argue that by taking a systems lens, sustainability researchers can better understand the implications of COVID-19 on business and society and prevent future pandemics. A systems lens asks management researchers to move from a firm-level perspective to one that also considers the broader socioecological context. We argue that for business to prevent future pandemics and assure future prosperity, business must recognize the limits to growth, alternative temporalities that do not pit the short against the long term, the nestedness of local phenomena in global systems, and leverage points that can reduce entrenched systems of social inequalities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Can you speak Covid-19? Languages and social inequality in management studies

The Covid-19 crisis makes the study of languages in management even more relevant and timely than before the crisis. In this essay, we discuss the implications of the pandemic for the scholarly agenda of languages in management studies. Our starting point is that Covid-19 represents a major disruption, producing discursive voids that need to be bridged. The meeting of languages opens up a whole new arena for political and ideological struggles over meaning that have so far received limited attention from management scholars. The pandemic and its social and economic reverberations reveal novel research avenues for management scholars studying multilingual setting. In times of crises there is an opportunity for new insight and knowledge to emerge, but crises also make communication gaps and voids of social meaning painfully visible. Covid-19 is foregrounding the consequences of what it means (not) to have access to knowledge, safety, justice, and voice - and lack of access is often aggravated, if not produced, by language barriers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Inequality in the time of corona virus

The Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to organization and management scholars to revisit some of the foundational assumptions that underpin our thriving research streams. In this essay, the author talk about what he think is this pandemic's biggest revelation: How we have chronically overlooked inequality in our work. When it comes to inequality in and around organizations, Covid-19 has truly laid bare how one of the defining afflictions of our time has escaped scrutiny from management scholar. The grand challenge is less Covid-19 and more the unjust socio-economic context around it. As management researchers, our focus should not just be on how organizations are coping with it, or who survives and who perishes, but also on what aspects of organization have been laid bare in this pandemic. The 'new normal' must include a better appreciation of the vast inequalities and injustices that characterize organizations, but which remain conspicuous by their absence in our literature. Scholars must think of new ways of approaching organizations, a way that underlines the tensions that exist just below the surface, and the different lives that are led within them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

COVID-19 and global governance

The COVID-19 epidemic has sent economic and social shockwaves reverberating across the globe, and has shaken governance institutions at every level and across a range of issues, from trade to health and climate change. The impact of COVID on these trends suggests some fruitful new directions for scholars of global governance and organizations. COVID has revealed the contingent, fragile nature of global governance institutions, as well as the limitations of power and authority in the face of large-scale crises. A disturbing implication is that threats need to be imminent and tangible to generate a meaningful governance response, but even then, actions are likely to be inconsistent and hard to sustain over time. The prospects are ominous for other looming crises such as climate change. The COVID crisis is likely to perturb the structures and processes of global governance, and particularly affect existing trends toward the rise in economic nationalism, authoritarian populism, and private and voluntary governance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Economic indicators of profitability in the production of organic and conventional food and psychological ways of overcoming the crisis in managers due to the possible decline of business during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 virus pandemic has led to huge changes in the business of many companies. Managers and owners of companies were most affected, so in one segment of this paper, certain psychological ways that are available to people when it comes to overcoming various crises. Considering that profitable business is a condition for the survival of companies, in this paper, a comparison of profitability in the production of organic and conventional food was performed. ROA and ROE were calculated on a sample of 150 food producers in our country for the period from 2016 to 2020. The results showed that ROA is higher in conventional food producers, while ROE is higher in organic food producers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the profitability of food producers is higher than in the period before its outbreak. Also, there is a tendency to increase profitability in both types of production.

Aspects of Strategic Management and Online Marketing

Strategic management is a way of managing a company based on the most important documents of the company such as vision and mission. Communication with customers, whether in the field of direct sales or sales and for further business are nowadays mainly based on quality marketing. Marketing is thus part of strategic decisions in the field of business management. Present time, which uses virtual space as a basic means of communication for the presentation and sale of products. Especially as a result of the Covid period, virtual marketing gained a priority in marketing activities and further globalized trade and business. The presented article describes the place of online marketing in business management, mainly highlights its place in strategic decisions and management. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Perceptions and readiness of foodservice establishments at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Metro Manila and region IV-A, Philippines

The study evaluated the perceptions and readiness of food business operators about COVID-19 through an online survey with respondents from Metro Manila and Region IV-A. Generally, they are knowledgeable about COVID-19 and its transmission, as reflected in their scores. The same is true about their attitude towards "new normal" practices. Years of operation, asset size, and continued operations and delivery services showed significant positive correlation with attitude scores. The resilience of some food business operators may be attributed to having more resources that enabled them to carry the added costs of what the new normal foodservice practices entailed. New normal practices include the implementation of health and safety protocols, shifting business models to online systems, food delivery services, dine-in by reservation, and menu innovations. Food business operators amenable to change and to innovate are more likely to keep afloat during a pandemic.

Experiences in the use of a unique open-book exam paper for every student in a cohort

Accounting and Finance is a core module for undergraduate students taking the Bachelor or Integrated Undergraduate Masters in Electronic Engineering with Business Management and in the taught Masters in Engineering Management at. the University of York. It is also a popular option module for all Electronic Engineering undergraduate programmes. It is traditionally assessed by a 2 question from 4 closed book exam testing students' knowledge and understanding of the subject at its application to Engineering business problems. One of the many consequences of Covid was the inability to hold closed book exams and a switch mas made to an open book exam where students were required to answer 4 from 4 questions. This change had the advantage of testing more of the module learning outcomes but the disadvantages of opening the module up for cheating and a doubling of the marking load. With the cohort size just under 200 students the issuing of all students with a unique exam was trialed together with automatically marking as much as possible. The pilot was successful in that a unique exam was sent to 94% of the students and most questions could be marked automatically. The paper describes the automation process and provides recommendations on how this could be improved up. © 2022 IEEE.

Do We Have to Change Our Business Models and Managerial Practice in COVID-19 Times? A Qualitative Study

The new way of working that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to all companies in the world has been a true "whirlwind” of changes to the traditional status quo of operation of each one of them. Faced with this turbulent environment, different organizations in the world have had to change their business models and traditional management practices to face the threat of COVID-19. Derived from this reality, it is preponderant to study the changes made by organizations in the context of this global pandemic. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to explore and understand how certain companies in the world have changed (or intend to) change their models of business and management practices to face the global pandemic. The methodology was qualitative in two crucial strategies, the exhaustive documentary analysis in 22 companies around the world and semi-structured in-depth interviews in the entire world, using theoretical sample. The most important findings were the identification of different clusters (4 in specific) of changes in business models and management practices characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the theoretical contribution of the article is because 84% of the management practices supported by the Mintzberg (2010) model were found in the data obtained in the research. The methodology was qualitative in two crucial strategies, the exhaustive documentary analysis in 22 companies around the world and semi-structured in-depth interviews in the entire world, using theoretical sample. The most important findings were the identification of different clusters (4 in specific) of changes in business models and management practices characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the theoretical contribution of the article is because 84% of the management practices supported by the Mintzberg (2010) model were found in the data obtained in the research. © 2023,Revista Portuguesa de Estudos Regionais. All Rights Reserved.

Country brand and its contribution to sustainable development: Instilling social values and entrepreneurship

The world is becoming increasingly complex and concerned about the resources that compose it, the current COVID-19 pandemic shows that not only companies but also countries are involved in a competition at all levels to become a reference impacting on the 3 dimensions (economic, social and environmental). The purpose of this research was to analyze the main motivations of B-certified companies in Latin America. The methodology was qualitative under the grounded theory method, the unit of analysis was 183 companies under exclusion criteria such as: Belonging to the industries of education, tourism and hospitality, and support for entrepreneurship, belonging to only Latin American countries and having the B certification. The main findings were that responsible B companies develop a more inclusive, sustainable and environmentally friendly economy for the benefit of society, that they go beyond the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility. The conclusions show that these companies move away from traditional companies, as they combine social development and economic growth, positioning the countries that have these types of companies as benchmarks. © 2023,Revista de Ciencias Sociales. All Rights Reserved.

The effects of COVID-19 on small and medium-sized enterprises: empirical evidence from Jordan

PurposeThe ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in sudden changes in the macro environment and market behaviour, making most enterprises urgently reconfigure their business models to cope with changes following the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper aims to present empirical data on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), highlighting the initial conclusions regarding their crisis management. It presents factual data on how SMEs in Jordan can use entrepreneurship to combat uncertainty and promote new opportunities.Design/methodology/approachThis study involves an exploratory qualitative research design, drawing from 32 semi-structured interviews of key informants from Jordanian SMEs in different stages of the crisis. The different coping strategies of the SMEs and their effectiveness in the first six months of the pandemic are then compared.FindingsThe findings show how Jordanian SMEs have adapted to cope with the changes in the business environment because of COVID-19. These strategies include modifying their operations that is moving from an ordinary business model to more tentative digitalisation, improving internal communication and restructuring ad hoc organisational culture.Originality/valueThe study presents important and timely implications for managers of Jordanian SMEs and policymakers by increasing the sensitisation and awareness of SMEs' coping mechanisms. It is the first study in management that empirically analyses the impact of COVID-19 on Jordanian SMEs.

Current trends and future research themes for sustainable business management post-COVID-19

Recently, it became more important for businesses to remain dynamic in both macro and micro environmental conditions to ensure operations are sustainable. The new sustainable business approaches and management practices that emerged during the COVID-19 era have increased business’ resilience to social, environmental, and financial problems. Sustainable business management requires knowledge about relevant research in sustainable business management, regarding both the COVID-19 era and future trends. Therefore, this study used a systematic literature review to identify future research themes related to sustainable business management in the post-COVID-19 era. Based on an analysis of current research tendencies related to the COVID-19 pandemic and sustainable business management practices, six research themes were proposed for integrated studies in manufacturing and service industries. These findings contribute to the current literature by providing a new perspective on research into sustainable business management in the post-COVID-19 era. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic on Changes in e-Consumer Behaviour: Empirical Analysis of Slovak e-Commerce Market

The issue of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy is highly topical at a time of gradual economic recovery. The study presents the results of more than a year and a half of empirical research on changes in consumer behaviour patterns of Slovaks obtained through an analysis of their online interactions with the five main representatives of the e-commerce industry. During both pandemic waves B2C and C2B interactions of a sample of more than half a million customers in the Facebook social network environment were systematically recorded. Subsequently, the data were compared with the reference period one year after the historically first lockdown. The results suggest that during the pandemic, customers switched into completely new patterns of consumer behaviour aimed at maximizing benefits. However, as the pandemic progressed, these patterns combined with the pre-pandemic standard behaviour and created a new, relatively stable evolving trend. This economically significant trend must be considered in business practice. © 2022, Institute of Geography of the Slovak Academy of Science. All rights reserved.

Procurement management mode of electrostatic protection materials in supply chain environment-Taking state-owned enterprises as an example

for every enterprise, material procurement is a very important link. It is not only related to cost control and production and management quality, but also determines the final economic benefits of the enterprise. Novel coronavirus pneumonia is a key issue for the enterprises. The overall management of material procurement is carried out throughout the whole business process. Especially in the current market economy environment, the new crown pneumonia epidemic continues to affect the enterprises and face more severe competition environment. If we want to gain more market share in the industry, we must innovate and adjust the original material procurement management mode and benchmark the international and domestic advanced standards. Nowadays, the shadow of Internet technology has penetrated into all walks of life, and new Internet technology has also been applied to the management of enterprise supply chain, which makes the relationship between enterprises closer and plays an important role in the process of enterprise development. Therefore, based on the supply chain environment, this paper gives some targeted measures and suggestions to strengthen the procurement management of electrostatic protection materials in state-owned enterprises for reference. © 2022 IEEE.

Commercial Management Model for Brand Awareness in a SME Company of Footwear Sector Before the COVID-19 Context

The objective of the research was to design a commercial management model for the brand awareness of an SME company in the Footwear Sector, of the city of Trujillo- Peru in 2021 in the context of COVID-19. The work methodology according to the approach is mixed, applied, prospective. Information gathering techniques from documentary analysis, observation of processes, interviews with the general manager and sales manager. A reliable questionnaire (Cronbach's Alpha of 0.811) and validated by expert judgment was applied to 40 clients (convenience sampling). The study was developed in three phases: Phase 1 - Strategic Formulation and Planning, with the analysis of the organizational culture, internal and external analysis, commercial analysis, Phase 2 - Strategic design, with the approach of 7 objectives and 8 strategic initiatives and Phase 3 - Evaluation and strategic monitoring, with the design of the Balanced Scorecard with performance evaluation indicators. Finally, a total investment of S / 76,530 was determined with an annual cost of S / 71,020 in 4 years of the project duration with a positive NPV of S / 173,598.16, IRR of 87% higher than the rate used and a B / C ratio of 1.58, which demonstrates the economic impact and positive viability of the implementation of the designed model in the company under study. © 2021 Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions. All rights reserved.

Adaptation strategies amid the pandemic among agri-tourism enterprises in La Union, Philippines

Prior to the pandemic, agri-tourism was on its rise in the Philippines. It is known as a fusion of Agriculture and tourism, linked to other sectors, including hospitality and transportation. However, travel bans and other restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic have adversely affected tourism. This study aimed to describe the pandemic effects on agri-tourism enterprises in the province of La Union, Philippines, and their adaptation strategies. A survey of 16 enterprises was conducted in May 2021. Descriptive and content analysis was employed to analyze the data and information gathered. The pandemic was found to have significantly affected the enterprises' marketing function, resulting in financial losses and adjustments to their business models. Their adaptation strategies were categorized as either survival or sustaining. Survival strategies were the farms' initial coping mechanisms like shifting to a new market, lowered prices, and switching to online marketing. On the other hand, sustaining strategies were also known as long-term solutions like diversification and expansion. The enterprises that adopted both strategies had wider offerings and possessed more than one accreditation. It is recommended that agri-tourism enterprises continue strategizing as the pandemic remains a threat. They should consider employing sustaining strategies for post-pandemic.

Msmes marketing strategies of Batik Malangan in the COVID19 pandemic

Economic activity must grow and develop faster than the growth in the number of people looking for work. One closely related element to economic growth is MSMEs, namely micro, small and medium enterprises. Indonesia's wealth assets that can be used as objects of batik tourism are also used as Indonesian cultural identity to the world. It is the reason that attracts researchers to make Batik Blimbing Malang SMEs the research object. Currently, the main task of Batik Blimbing Malang that must be carried out as a batik industry that is sufficiently developed to maintain the viability of its business in the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic era, is one of them by designing appropriate promotional strategies to face market competition. Therefore, this study aims to explore the sales promotion strategy of SMEs by conducting a qualitative research approach. This study was conducted on Batik Blimbing Malang. The results showed that the strategy of Batik Blimbing Malang in maintaining its business continuity, among others, was to do several points, including: Advertising, Personal selling, Sales promotion, Public relations, Word of mouth, Customer relationship.

Digitization model for costs and operating times reduction in Peruvian Banks

Deforestation is one of the problems that is producing a significant impact on the environment in countries that have large extensions of forests such as Peru, caused by different factors such as paper consumption, whose increase in recent years has also generated an increase in the costs and times related to the management and transportation of physical documents. These physical processes were further affected due to the COVID-19 restrictions, having a significant negative impact on customer satisfaction due to some processes that required their presence at bank branches. According to recent research, 90% of financial institutions continue to maintain a traditional document management system that consists of printing, storing and consulting physical documents, due to the lack of culture and activities aimed at digitizing processes;however, this change is possible with a model oriented to the transformation of said processes and the organizational culture;our main motivation to carry out this research was the change that the digitization of processes offers to companies and the environment. Our management model consists of 4 stages: collection of necessary requirements, identification of the main problem and improvement objectives, execution of the 3 management tools selected from our model and validation of the results obtained. The result obtained thanks to the application of the model in our validation case, shows a reduction of 65% of the costs related to document management in the first 3 months, in the following 3 months the reduction suffers an increase to 95.37%. In addition to this, the time to search and obtain documents will be reduced by approximately 99%. In conclusion, we determined that Change Management and Organizational and Infrastructure Management are necessary to be able to transform physical processes into digital ones since these three complement each other.

Chain management - an important step for a successful business in the COVID-19 conditions

Chain management is an important aspect of running any business. In this article, we look at advances in chain management. At the beginning we present basic definitions and key issues related to the types of channels, followed by a discussion of the degrees of complexity of the chain. We then discuss chain flows - a step forward in chain management, supply chain efficiency indicators and so on. Finally, a brief summary of research to date and a discussion of future challenges for supply chain management are presented. The outbreak of COVID-19 introduced an unprecedented and extraordinary situation of supply chains whose survival requires a large-scale resilience.