Long-term effects of COVID-19 on work routines and organizational culture – A case study within higher education’s administration

Lea S. Müller, Sebastian Reiners, Jörg Becker and Guido Hertel

Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 163, issue C

Abstract: As a sudden, external event, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly disrupted the workplace and required organizations to digitalize their working approaches. To understand how such external events affect organizations in the short- and long-term, we investigated the case of a higher education institution’s administration, which combines features of public and private organizations. We applied a longitudinal case study and conducted interviews with 39 German higher education institution (HEI) employees at two time points during the first (2020) and second (2021) lockdown. Content analyses revealed that a general openness toward change and distinct technical infrastructure enabled efficient coping with the pandemic despite struggles with digitalization and rigidity. Advantages in work outcomes were contrasted with losses in social interactions. Flexible models (e.g., working from home or the office) were desirable long-term work concepts. We integrated our findings in a framework on factors that contribute to supporting organizational adaptations and derived practical recommendations.

Keywords: Higher education administration; COVID-19; Digitalization; Qualitative research; Digital work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323002850
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:163:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323002850

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113927

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().