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This study compares the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock returns in the first two waves of infection across selected markets, given built-in corporate immunity before the global outbreak.

The data are collected from listed firms in five markets that have experienced the second wave of COVID-19 contagion, namely the United States (US), Australia, China, Hong Kong and South Korea. The period of investigation in this study ranges from January 24 to August 28, 2020 to cover the first two COVID-19 waves in selected markets. The study estimates the research model by employing the ordinary least square method with fixed effects to control for the heterogeneity that may confound the empirical outcomes.

The analysis reveals that firms with larger size and more cash reserves before the COVID-19 outbreak have better stock performance under the first wave; however, these advantages impede stock resilience during the second wave. Corporate governance practices significantly influence stock returns only in the first wave as their effects fade when the second wave emerges. The results also suggest that in economies with greater power distance, although stock price depreciation was milder in the first wave, it is more intense when new cases again surge after the first wave was contained.

This paper provides practical implications for corporate managers, policymakers and governments concerning crisis management strategies for COVID-19 and future pandemics.

This study is the first to evaluate built-in corporate immunity before the COVID-19 shock under successive contagious waves. Besides, this study accentuates the importance of cultural understanding in weathering the ongoing pandemic across different markets.

Covid-19 has caused many businesses to rethink their short- and potentially long-term workforce operations. The use of lateral flow serology can provide a clinically convenient approach for the assessment of prior infection with Covid-19. However, its widespread adoption in organisations seeking to use it to test for workforce immunity is controversial and confusing. This paper aims to explore the paradoxical dilemmas and dialectics immunity workforce testing creates.

This study involved capturing the ethnographical participation of a chief executive officer (CEO) dealing with the experience of managing the outcomes of Covid-19 workforce immunity testing. The aim was to take a snapshot in time of the CEO's empirical world, capturing their lived experiences to explore how management actions resulting from Covid-19 immunity testing can played out.

Providing staff with immunity tests at first glance appears sensible, decent and a caring action to take. Nevertheless, once such knowledge is personalised by employees, they can, through dialectic dialogue, feel disadvantaged and harbour feelings of unfairness. Subsequently, this paper suggests that immunity testing may only serve to raise awareness and deepen the original management dilemma of whether testing is a worthwhile activity.

This paper aims to be amongst the first works to empirically explore the workforce management challenges that arise within small businesses within the service sector following the completion of Covid-19 immunity testing of their staff. It seeks to achieve this via utilising the robust theoretical framework of the paradox theory to examine Covid-19's impact upon small business workforce management thinking and practice.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which the financial investigation function of an intergovernmental organisation (IGO) may be considered in policing terms, with a view to categorising it in relation to existing paradigms, while acknowledging the IGO’s unique context, in which it enjoys autonomy through various privileges and immunities.

This paper describes and analyses the internal investigation function of IGOs, drawing on practitioner experience as well as mandates, resolutions and reviews from the intergovernmental sector, before making comparisons with policing typologies.

Notwithstanding their expansion into inquiries of non-financial misconduct, IGO investigation offices are the primary means of addressing financial wrongdoing affecting their organisations. Comparisons are drawn with both the corporate policing role inherent in other employment-based organisations and with public policing as a function of the state. It is found that these two paradigms are insufficient to categorise policing within the unique context of the IGO, which has hybrid features of both.

In comparing IGO investigation alongside existing policing paradigms, this paper lays a foundation for further research into the accountability models applicable to this policing function.

This paper discusses the emergence of a form of policing with hybrid features of both internal corporate policing and state law enforcement and contributes to a field that is largely unaddressed in existing research.

This research aims at synthesizing the existing body of literature on the role of environmental, social and governance (ESG) during the Covid-19 global pandemic, identifying the research agenda and perspectives on the role of ESG during times of economic turbulences and pointing to gaps and future research directions in this area.

A literature review of academic articles that focus on the role of ESG investments during the Covid-19 pandemic is conducted. These studies are identified based on searching/containing the keywords “ESG”, “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)”, “Sustainability” and “Sustainable Finance” in combination with one or more of the following terms: “Covid-19”, “Pandemic” “and Crisis”. Then, the authors explore the key directions/themes in these papers, and highlight the main gaps and areas that are evolving as future research opportunities.

The empirical findings provide overall compelling evidence in support of the role of ESG during times of crisis, especially when it comes to stock risk and volatility. For example, several studies report that ESG stocks are associated with superior stock performance (higher stock returns and firm value) during the pandemic, while other studies report that ESG act as a risk protection tool during times of crisis, as they document that ESG stocks are associated with lower volatility and lower downside risk during the Covid-19 crisis.

To the best of the authors knowledge, no review of the literature on the role that ESG plays during crises and pandemics has been conducted before. Thus, it fulfills this research gap in the literature.

The times have come down to us as the “Good Old Days”, of Edwardian elegance and grace, peace and plenty, which conceal the poverty, squalor and disease. There seemed less resentment from those who suffered the rigours of the times than from those of today who only know of them by repute. Life was indeed cruel to the submerged tenth of society and the homeless waifs and strays were all too real and true.

This chapter covers basic concepts, ethical theories, and moral paradigms of corporate ethics for identifying, understanding, and responding to the turbulent market challenges of today. The concept, nature, and domain of ethics, business ethics, managerial ethics, and corporate executive ethics are defined and differentiated for their significance. The domain, scope, and nature of related concepts such as legality, ethicality, morality, and executive spirituality are distinguished and developed. Among normative and descriptive ethical theories that we briefly review and critique here are teleology or utilitarianism, deontology or existentialism, distributive justice, corrective justice, and ethics of malfeasance and beneficence. Other moral theories of ethics such as ethics of human dignity, ethics of cardinal virtues, ethics of trusting relations, ethics of stakeholder rights and duties, ethics of moral reasoning and judgment calls, ethics of executive and moral leadership, and ethics of social and moral responsibility will be treated in a later book. The thrust of this book is positive: despite our not very commendable track record in managing this planet and its resources, our basic questions are: Where are we now? What are we now? Where should we as corporations go, and why? What are the specific positive mandates and metrics to corporate executives to reach that desired destiny? This chapter explores responses to these strategic corporate questions.

Two years ago the writer noted that the territories of the Caribbean, while executing MLAT's with various extra‐regional territories, had not by and large embraced global counter‐narcotics initiatives. The balance has now been decisively and radically altered. This article attempts an assessment of some of the more noteworthy current developments against certain basic norms in international law.

This paper provides new evidence on Indian tourism firms by investigating the role of a firm's financial conditions typified by its leverage, earnings, size, cash holdings, and excess cash in moderating the pandemic-led idiosyncratic volatility in its stock prices.

The authors employ a firm-level panel comprising 82 publicly-listed tourism firms from India. Firm risk is estimated for the period beginning January 2020 to December 2020.

This paper finds non-linear effects of the pandemic on the idiosyncratic risk of the sample firms. Precisely, stock price volatility rises, but as the market absorbs this information, volatility subsides even as the disease spreads further. Further, lower levels of past debt and earnings and higher cash holdings ameliorate the pandemic's effects on tourism firms' risk. Contrasting the view that “excess” cash reflects poor operational performance, we show that “excess” cash firms are better prepared to face the adverse effects of the pandemic.

This study’s sample period fully encompasses the first wave of the pandemic (January–December 2020) of the novel coronavirus infection spread.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess the moderating effects of company fundamentals on the risk of Indian tourism firms. In doing so, the authors account for non-linear effects of the pandemic on firms' idiosyncratic volatility over time.