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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of media attention on corporate disaster relief.

The authors used a matched sample research design, which is considered more appropriate than a random sample design for studying events that have low-occurrence rates in general. For each donor firm in the Yushu earthquake, the authors matched the firm with a non-donor firm in the same industry and with a firm size of within ±30 percent of the total assets in the year prior to the year of the occurrence of the Yushu earthquake. Then, using the Baidu engine, which is the most popular Chinese search engine, the authors captured the online media attention to the donor firms and their disaster relief.

The authors found that media attention drove corporate disaster relief.

Although the authors highlighted the role of the media as an important stakeholder in influencing corporate disaster relief, the authors did not fully explore the media’s influence. Future research should delve more deeply into the impact of the tenor of media coverage on corporate disaster relief.

This study reveals that the media, a particularly powerful stakeholder, can be a corporate disaster relief driver in China.

This study seeks to provide insights into corporate achievements in supply chain management (SCM) and logistics management and to detail how they might help disaster agencies. The authors aim to highlight and identify current practices, particularities, and challenges in disaster relief supply chains.

Both SCM and logistics management literature and examples drawn from real‐life cases inform the development of the theoretical model.

The theoretical, dual‐cycle model that focuses on the key missions of disaster relief agencies: first, prevention and planning and, second, response and recovery. Three major contributions are offered: a concise representation of current practices and particularities of disaster relief supply chains compared with commercial SCM; challenges and barriers to the development of more efficient SCM practices, classified into learning, strategising, and coordinating and measurement issues; and a simple, functional model for understanding how collaborations between corporations and disaster relief agencies might help relief agencies meet SCM challenges.

The study does not address culture‐clash related considerations. Rather than representing the entire scope of real‐life situations and practices, the analysis relies on key assumptions to help conceptualise collaborative paths.

The study provides specific insights into how corporations might help improve the SCM practices by disaster relief agencies that continue to function without SCM professional expertise, tools, or staff.

The paper shows that sharing supply chain and logistics expertise, technology, and infrastructure with relief agencies could be a way for corporations to demonstrate their good corporate citizenship. Collaborations between corporations and disaster agencies offer significant potential benefits.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how firms compete with each other in philanthropic giving in the context of a natural disaster. In particular, the authors want to investigate: Which firms act faster in disaster relief giving? How do late movers react? In the end, which firms donate most at the competitive equilibrium, first or late movers? Whether and how firm visibility will affect the relationships proposed based on the former three questions?

The Chinese listed companies that donated to the May 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake are taken as a sample. A negative binomial regression analysis is first conducted to identify the first movers. Then, linear regression analysis is conducted to identify the competition between first movers and late movers.

The authors find that large firms and firms with a high financial performance tend to be first movers in disaster relief giving. Late movers donate amounts that are similar to those of first movers in both absolute and relative value. But first movers donate more in absolute value than late movers in the whole process of giving. Firm visibility strengthens the effect of financial performance (return on assets) on giving timing, but weakens the effect of giving timing on both first round and total giving amount.

This study provides a dynamic theory of giving and enhances the understanding of the motives and patterns of corporate disaster relief giving. It also illustrates important insights into firms’ strategic and tactical behavior in disaster relief giving.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework on how strategic philanthropy can be included in humanitarian supply chains delivery. This framework explains the modalities where strategic philanthropy can be successful when collaborating with key humanitarian supply chain actors.

A philanthropy delivery framework is developed based on the literature related to strategic philanthropy and humanitarian supply chains. The delivery framework is further validated with the real-life case study of a multinational firm during the 2011 Thai floods.

Procter and Gamble (P&G) was involved in the Thailand flood 2011 relief efforts in three phases: preparation, immediate response, and reconstruction phase. The company supported and distributed a water purifier through a non-governmental relief agency, the Princess Pa Foundation, under the Thai Red Cross Society, that enabled P&G to not only gain the trust of the targeted community during all the phases but in the continued usage of their water purifier after the event. Community leaders and P&G’s modern trade retailers played an important role in collaborating in this humanitarian supply chain to enable the successful delivery and usage of the donated water purifier.

This proposed delivery framework is appropriate for in-kind products and services philanthropy. The case study describes how strategic philanthropy can be implemented in a specific case, i.e. flood disaster.

Academia, practitioners, and companies who are involved in humanitarian reliefs may adopt and adapt this framework in order to enable a win-win situation for all stakeholders in the humanitarian supply chain.

The delivery framework suggests that firms can develop successful strategic philanthropy through systematic humanitarian supply chain collaboration. It explains how a company can operate its philanthropic programs through collaboration with others as well as describes how these different actors can work together.

The purpose of this paper is to address the inefficiency problems in procurement operations in disaster relief logistics which are mainly due to the lack of coordination among less organized suppliers and partnerships. Such problems lead to poor responsiveness and hinder timely procurement of required goods.

An auction‐based framework for procurement of goods, which is suitable for a single coordinating platform in disaster relief logistics, is proposed. Integer programming formulations are used in auctioning operations. A simulation model that generates problem instances is used to evaluate and tune system‐level design parameters.

Design parameters greatly affect the behaviour and responsiveness of the system and the performance of the auction‐based framework in different problem instances. Combinations of those parameters may allow suppliers with limited capacities to become more involved in the bidding process. In addition, the procurement shares of bidders may change substantially with different values of the parameters.

Even though the presented framework is inspired from real‐life applications, it is not implemented in real‐life disaster relief operations. The goodness of fit for the framework would best be evaluated by a real disaster case. In addition, transportation scheduling and vehicle routing considerations and budgeting issues are not considered in the framework.

This paper presents an auction‐based framework for less organized suppliers of goods and their partnerships, such as local humanitarian organizations, private companies, and standby partners. The presented framework offers a background for coordination during disaster relief operations which provides opportunities to act as a set of organized entities. This background also helps those entities coordinate their efforts to enhance the capabilities of local governments and NGOs.

This study aims to examine the corporate donations in response to the intensive outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in 2020 and proposes that the local spread of COVID-19 is negatively associated with corporate donations due to the non-trivial costs, but meanwhile, strong institutional pressures based on institutional theory are put on firms to donate, which thus creates a dilemma for firms. This study further argues that the dilemma is heterogeneous across different institutional fields.

Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during the intensive outbreak of this pandemic, a two-stage Heckman selection model is conducted to address the potential sample selection bias.

This study reveals a negative relationship between the local spread of COVID-19 and corporate donations, confirms the driving effect of various types of institutional pressure and finds that the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic strengthens the effect of coercive pressure and mimetic pressure on philanthropic giving but weakens the effect of normative pressure.

This study extends the knowledge on firms’ philanthropic response to natural crises, as the COVID-19 pandemic has not only led to a public health crisis but also to a global economic crisis, and how the effects of institutional pressures are affected by a situational crisis. This work enriches the literature on corporate philanthropy and crisis management and has some implications for both policymakers and business practitioners.

Background: The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused tremendous socio-economic problems. All societies worldwide were faced with an emergency situation, and many were puzzled by the implementation of various countermeasures to overcome this situation. Such events call for active engagement and support from the private sector. Noting the expected social role of the private sector, this study builds on stakeholder theory and investigates the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of Korean global firms facing the difficulties of this situation.

Methods: This study collected and analyzed news reports about the CSR activities of three representative Korean global firms (Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Hyundai Motors). News reports posted from January 2019 and after January 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred in Korea, were collected. From the reports, the main keywords illustrating their CSR activities were extracted, and the frequency of each company was analyzed.

Results: Findings showed that their CSR activities during the COVID-19 pandemic were conducted in a prompt and systemic way. They maintained focus on their main CSR activities, which were closely aligned with their business and CSR visions; simultaneously, they rapidly identified the areas needing support from their daily business activities and responded to them immediately and discretionary. This highlights their genuine motives in their CSR activities and good citizenship, as well as their significant role as rescuers during countrywide disasters.

Conclusions: Supporting stakeholder theory, this study shows the broadly defined CSR activities of Korean global firms focusing on their target stakeholders. The agile and systemic approach to the companies' CSR activities can benefit both society and businesses, contributing to creating social values and sustained co-prosperity with society. Furthermore, this study suggests that a close collaborative relationship with the government can produce a synergistic effect on community building recovering from a nationwide disaster.

From an institutional perspective, this study empirically examines whether institutional pressures, such as industry pressures and public attention, significantly influence corporate philanthropic disaster responses (CPDRs). Furthermore, this paper aims to examine the moderating role of a company’s prior history of philanthropic donation.

This paper uses secondhand data from 217 Chinese listed companies that responded philanthropically to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

This paper finds that both industry pressure and public attention are positively associated with companies’ donations; their prior history of philanthropic donations significantly moderates these relationships such that these relationships become stronger and for companies that have prior histories of small philanthropic donations.

First, this paper contributes to the philanthropy literature by identifying two kinds of institutional pressures (i.e. industry pressure and public attention) that exert great influences on CPDR contributions. Second, by studying the moderating role of firms’ prior philanthropic history, this study contributes to the understanding of companies’ different reactions to institutional pressures. In addition to the theoretical contribution, this paper encourages companies to proactively establish a sustainable philanthropic giving plan rather than being passively driven by external stakeholders.

While researchers recognize the significance of philanthropic donations in disaster relief and recovery, the benefits that firms derive from such donations remain unclear, particularly when firms are adversely impacted by the disaster. To address this gap, this study seeks to elucidate the impact of various donation strategies on firm resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Based on the hand-collected data on donations, the authors employ ordinary least squares regressions to investigate the effectiveness of various donation strategies – including type, timing and location – in enhancing firm resilience in terms of the severity of stock price losses during the pandemic. To address potential endogeneity concerns, the authors use a two-stage least squares regression with instrumental variables.

This study finds robust evidence that certain donation strategies are more effective at mitigating stock price losses during the pandemic. Specifically, the authors find that in-kind donations (compared to monetary ones), earlier donations (compared to later ones) and donations targeting severely impacted areas (Hubei province vs. other places) are more effective methods to reduce the severity of stock price losses.

This study points out an alternative mechanism through which donations influence firm resilience during a crisis context and provides important managerial implications for firms to better engage in disaster donations.

After Hurricane Katrina hit the coast of Louisiana on August 29, 2005, Wal-Mart initiated emergency operations that not only protected and reopened its stores, but also helped its employees and others in the community cope with the disaster's personal impact. This response was part of a wider effort by the company under CEO Lee Scott to improve its public image. Wal-Mart's efforts were widely regarded as the most successful of all corporations in the aftermath of the disaster and set the standard for future corporate disaster relief programs.

Move beyond the operational dimensions of disaster response and appreciate how disaster response is connected to the company's strategy and its position in the market place. Understand how disasters are different than other types of reputational crises and are subject to different expectation from the public. Understand how a company can do well by doing good: how it can do the right thing and benefit its business at the same time. Discuss the changing expectations of companies to act in the public interest.