Search results

In times of crisis, the fundamental principles of companies erode, leading to strategy shifts. This paper aims to examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on management’s agenda in times of crisis, indicating CSR embeddedness into corporate strategy. The focus is on the four pillars of CSR: social, environment, economy and governance.

Starting points are competing hypotheses based on shareholder and stakeholder theory. Chief executive officer (CEO) letters to shareholders of German HDAX firms from 2003 to 2012 are analyzed by means of computer-aided text analysis.

The authors find that CEOs talk less about CSR in times of crisis, especially about social and governance issues, indicating that CSR is not fully embedded into corporate strategy, and that, in times of crisis, other aspects gain more importance on management’s agenda.

CEO communication is an indicator for management’s attention. Less talk about CSR in times of crisis does not automatically indicate less real CSR activity. This study is a starting point for analyses of the discrepancy between both, if any exists.

Managers should regard CSR as a strategic and trust enhancing element and stick to CSR even when under pressure from market distortions.

Environment issues – exposed to companies’ attention for a long time – are embedded into corporate strategy. More research and management attention is essential to get the other CSR aspects woven into company DNA as well.

The paper is the first to research CSR in times of crisis in depth: CSR as umbrella covers social, environment, economy and governance issues. The institutional level of analysis ensures that implications for the business-society link are central.

Business cycle theory is normally described as having evolved out of a previous tradition of writers focusing exclusively on crises. In this account, the turning point is seen as residing in Clément Juglar's contribution on commercial crises and their periodicity. It is well known that the champion of this view is Schumpeter, who propagated it on several occasions. The same author, however, pointed to a number of other writers who, before and at the same time as Juglar, stressed one or another of the aspects for which Juglar is credited primacy, including the recognition of periodicity and the identification of endogenous elements enabling the recognition of crises as a self-generating phenomenon. There is indeed a vast literature, both primary and secondary, relating to the debates on crises and fluctuations around the middle of the nineteenth century, from which it is apparent that Juglar's book Des Crises Commerciales et de leur Retour Périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (originally published in 1862 and very much revised and enlarged in 1889) did not come out of the blue but was one of the products of an intellectual climate inducing the thinking of crises not as unrelated events but as part of a more complex phenomenon consisting of recurring crises related to the development of the commercial world – an interpretation corroborated by the almost regular occurrence of crises at about 10-year intervals.

This case study analyzes Countrywide Financial’s responses to its recent financial crisis and illustrates the use of communication theory and image restoration strategies by utilizing several crisis response frameworks. The study uses a critical analysis methodology to examine the communication strategies employed by Countrywide, a large mortgage lending company in order to attempt to restore its image. The authors look at excerpts from media stories, carefully examine the language used by company representatives in response to the banking crisis, and categorize the corporate communications into various strategies as defined in the crisis communication literature. Countrywide faced several crisis situations during the period of this study, including the subprime mortgage crisis, public criticism of its CEO’s executive compensation package, allegations of insider trading, and financial difficulties. Corporate responses are critical in determining what amount of damage is done to the firm’s image during a crisis. Countrywide responded to these situations most often using the strategies of image bolstering, reducing the credibility of its accuser, and minimizing the crisis (Benoit, 1995). Through these communications, the company attempted to appear well established and untarnished. It also criticized the media, the courts, and the regulators in an attempt to reduce their credibility. Countrywide made no deliberate attempt to admit fault or to take measures to prevent the problem from reoccurring.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a nuanced understanding of what employees want from leaders in an organizational crisis context.

The authors use a mixed methods approach to explore employee leadership preferences during organizational crisis and non-crisis times using the Multi Factor Leadership Questionnaire (Avolio and Bass, 2004), and qualitative interviews. The authors also investigate sex roles using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1981).

The mixed method approach reveals some potential limitations in how leadership is typically measured. The qualitative findings highlight employees’ expectations of leaders to take action quickly while simultaneously engaging in continuous communication with employees during crisis. None of the components of transformational leadership encapsulate this notion.

The mixed methods approach is novel in the crisis leadership literature. Had the authors relied solely on the quantitative measures, the importance of continuous communication during crisis would not have been apparent. As a result of this approach, the findings suggest that widely used and accepted measures of leadership may not adequately capture leadership in a crisis context. This is timely as it aligns with current literature which questions the way this construct is operationalized (Van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013).

With a decrease in consumer spending during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many retailers are offering price reductions to stimulate demand. However, little is known about how consumers perceive such price reductions executed during turbulent times. The authors examine whether the timing of price reductions and individual differences impact consumers' evaluations of the retailers offering such reductions.

Using a longitudinal design, the authors inquire into four retailers' motives that consumers may infer from a price decrease at two different times during the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors find that the timing of price reductions plays a key role in shaping consumers' inference of retailers' motives. The authors also uncover individual characteristics that affect consumers' inferences.

This research advances the literature by demonstrating the critical role of timing and individual characteristics in consumers' perceptions of price reductions during times of crisis. The authors findings also provide retailers with actionable insights for their pricing strategies. The findings may be generalizable to other types of crises that may arise in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how crises impact overall tourist behaviour and travel preferences in times of crisis events, both man-made and natural disasters. In doing so, the present paper has been designed to provide a new conceptualization of travellers’ shifting preferences in terms of the selection of holiday destinations through the new concept of tourophobia and to classify this as a new type of tourist behaviour.

The present study uses a literature review as a qualitative deductive content analysis of 58 field studies published by major hospitality and tourism journals. By using a deductive content analysis approach, the current paper is designed to delineate tourist behaviour through a generic review of relevant literature detailing travellers’ preferences in times of crisis.

The developed concept of tourophobia and the suggested model, which proposes two possible scenarios, shows that traveller behaviour is heterogeneous in terms of the destination selection process; this finding is based on a content analysis of the articles chosen. Further, by using the developed model, the decline in travel and tourism can also be explained by an increase in what is termed in this paper “tourophobia”, which results from the various devastating effects of crises.

The proposed model is expected to help destination managers and marketers to segment and forecast the future market demand of tourist travel preferences, thereby enabling them to form effective marketing strategies and increase their responsiveness during difficult times. Only articles from hospitality and tourism journals were subjected to content analysis; this is a major limitation of the study.

The present research contributes to current knowledge by describing the concept of tourophobia as a tourist behaviour in times of crisis. As an emerging phenomenon, it is also introduced as being one criterion for the selection of destinations and, therefore, is regarded as a driver for tourist behaviour, thus generating the originality of the paper. This study strives to provide a new direction for future studies on tourist behaviour, rather than offering new empirical data.

本文旨在研究在人为和自然灾害的危机事件中, 危机是如何影响旅游者的整体行为和旅游偏好的。在此过程中, 本论文旨在通过旅游恐惧症的概念, 对旅游者在选择度假目的地方面的偏好变化提供一个新的概念化过程, 并将其归类为一种新的旅游行为类型。

本研究采用文献回顾的方法, 对发表在主流酒店和旅游学术期刊上的58个实地研究进行定性演绎分析。本文运用演绎内容分析法, 通过对危机时期旅游者偏好的相关文献的综述, 勾勒出旅游者的行为特征。

旅游恐惧症的发展概念和假设模型提出了两种可能的情况, 表明旅行者的行为在目的地选择过程中是异质的；这一发现是基于对所选文章的内容分析。此外, 通过使用已开发的模型, 旅游业和旅游业的衰退也可以用本文所称的“旅游恐惧症”的增加来解释, 这是由危机的各种破坏性影响造成的。

该模型有望帮助旅游目的地管理者和营销者对旅游偏好的未来市场需求进行细分和预测, 从而形成有效的营销策略, 增强他们在困难时期的反应能力。本文的一个主要局限是, 仅对酒店和旅游期刊的文章进行了内容分析。

本研究通过将旅游恐惧症的概念描述为危机时期的一种旅游行为, 为当前的知识做出了贡献。旅游恐惧症作为一种新出现的现象, 也是旅游目的地选择的一个标准, 因此它被认为是旅游行为的驱动因素, 从而体现了本文的独创性。本研究旨在为未来的旅游行为研究提供一个新的方向, 而不是提供新的实证数据。

El objetivo del presente documento es examinar cómo las crisis impactan el comportamiento turístico general y las preferencias de viaje en tiempos de crisis, relacionadas con desastres naturales, así como, provocadas por el hombre. Al hacerlo, el presente documento ha sido diseñado para proporcionar una nueva conceptualización de las preferencias cambiantes de los viajeros en términos de la selección de destinos de vacaciones a través del nuevo concepto de “tourophobia”, y para clasificar esto como un nuevo tipo de comportamiento turístico.

El presente estudio emplea una revisión de la literatura basado en un análisis de contenido deductivo cualitativo de 58 estudios de campo publicados por las principales revistas de hotelería y turismo. Al utilizar un enfoque de análisis de contenido deductivo, el documento actual está diseñado para delinear el comportamiento turístico a través de una revisión genérica de literatura relevante que detalla las preferencias de los viajeros en tiempos de crisis.

El concepto desarrollado de “tourophobia” y el modelo sugerido, que propone dos escenarios posibles, muestra que el comportamiento del viajero es heterogéneo en términos del proceso de selección del destino; Este hallazgo se basa en un análisis de contenido de los artículos elegidos. Además, mediante el uso del modelo desarrollado, la disminución de los viajes y el turismo también puede explicarse por un aumento en lo que se denomina en este documento “tourophobia”, que resulta de los diversos efectos devastadores de las crisis.

Se espera que el modelo propuesto ayude a los directores de planificación turística de destinos, así como a los de marketing a segmentar y pronosticar la demanda futura del mercado con respecto a las preferencias de viajes turísticos, lo que les permite formar estrategias de marketing efectivas y aumentar su capacidad de respuesta en tiempos difíciles. Solo los artículos de revistas de hotelería y turismo fueron sometidas al análisis de contenido; ésta constituye una limitación importante del estudio.

La presente investigación contribuye al conocimiento actual al describir el concepto de “tourophobia” como un comportamiento turístico en tiempos de crisis. Como fenómeno emergente, también se presenta como un criterio para la selección de destinos y, por lo tanto, se considera un motor del comportamiento turístico, generando así la originalidad del documento. Este estudio se esfuerza por proporcionar una nueva dirección para futuros estudios sobre el comportamiento turístico, en lugar de ofrecer nuevos datos empíricos.

The adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have opened the door to investigations of the leadership practices needed to guarantee positive work-related outcomes among employees in organizations. Therefore, building on the norm of reciprocity, this research aims to propose a model to examine servant leadership’s role in stimulating task performance and risk-taking behaviors during crisis times. In this model, safety climate was hypothesized to serve as a mediating variable between servant leadership, task performance and risk-taking behavior.

Data were collected from 237 staff (medial and administrative staff) working in Palestinian hospitals. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Common method bias remedies were presented.

This study demonstrates that servant leadership is effective in fostering task performance and risk-taking behaviors in times of crisis through the mediation of safety climate. According to the results, safety climate demonstrated to fully mediate relationship between servant leadership and task performance (ß = 0.225, p-value = 0.000), and the relationship between servant leadership and risk-taking behavior (ß = 0.248, p-value = 0.000). Moreover, the results demonstrated that employees with higher experience tend to be more willing to engage in risk-taking behavior.

The findings may be useful for hospital managers on the role servant leadership can play in generating positive work-related outcomes during crisis times.

The paper is among the few empirical endeavors which examine the consequences of servant leadership in times of crisis, taking into account the intervening role of safety climate.

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities theory, the purpose of this study is to empirically explore the moderating role of government support (GS) in the relationship between innovation capability (IC) and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance in times of economic crisis.

The study adopted a descriptive research design and collected data from 234 SMEs drawn from the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria using a self-reported questionnaire. PLS-SEM was performed to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that IC was positively associated with SME performance. Further analysis indicated that GS had a strong positive impact on SME performance and positively moderated the relationship between IC and SME performance.

There is a paucity of studies that specifically explore the moderating role of GS in the relationship between IC and SME performance. This study contributes to the literature on SMEs by demonstrating the moderating effect of GS on the relationship between IC and SME performance in times of economic crisis. The study offers valuable insights into the vital role played by IC and GS in times of economic crisis.

This study assesses the capability of artificial intelligence integrated customer relationship management (AI-CRM) technology for sustaining family businesses in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also investigates the moderating role of strategic intent in sustaining family businesses in times of crisis.

The authors used dynamic capability view theory and related literature on family business and technology adoption to develop a conceptual model. This model has been validated using the structural equation modeling technique considering 332 usable responses from people of India involved in family businesses and technology adoption. The study also uses multigroup analysis to examine the moderating role of strategic intent.

The study finds that adoption of AI-CRM technology significantly and positively impacts dynamic capabilities of the family businesses, such as sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities, which in turn positively and significantly influences their sustainability during crises. The study also highlights the significant moderating impact of strategic intent for sustaining family business firms in uncertain times.

This study has highlighted the importance for family businesses to adopt AI-CRM technology and its influence on their dynamic capabilities. The study also provides important inputs to the management of family businesses regarding adoption of new technologies and their significance during crises. The study also documents that strategic intent could help family businesses to survive during such times. The study is conducted in India and thus cannot be generalized.

This study table is unique in that it investigates the influence of AI-CRM technology and the moderating role of strategic intent on family business sustainability in times of crisis. Moreover, the proposed theoretical model is a unique model with explanative power of 71%.