Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Resilience to COVID-19 Crisis: An Empirical Study of Chinese Firms

Wenchuan Huang, Shouming Chen and Luu Thi Nguyen
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Wenchuan Huang: School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Shouming Chen: School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Luu Thi Nguyen: School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 21, 1-19

Abstract: Resilience captures firm capability to adjust to and recover from unexpected shocks in the environment. Being latent and path-dependent, the manifestation of organizational resilience is hard to be directly measured. This article assesses organizational resilience of firms in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic with pre-shock corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance as a predictor that positively influences the level of organizational resilience to the external shock caused by the pandemic. We develop three theoretical mechanisms based on stakeholder theory, resource-based theory, reputation perspective and means-end chain theory to explain how CSR fulfillment in the past could help firms maintain stability to adapt to and react flexibly to recover from the crisis. We examine the relationship in the context of the systemic shock caused by COVID-19, using a sample of 1597 listed firms in China during the time window from 20 January 2020 to 10 June 2020. We find that companies with higher CSR performance before the shock will experience fewer losses and will take a shorter time to recover from the attack.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; organizational resilience; COVID-19; stakeholder theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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