The impact of the COVID - 19 pandemic on business : a preliminary overview

Abstract

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business is significant and must be assessed on various levels, as it has determined fast-moving variables, many of them totally unexpected and for which managers all over the world were not prepared to handle. On the bright side, the COVID-19 crisis revealed the ability of mature businesses to adapt in an agile manner - both in strategy and in operations -, catalyzing the large-scale adoption of digitalization and remote working and thus, determining important changes in organizational cultures and management models. We present in this opinion paper a practice-oriented summary of the most important aspects that redesign business in the COVID-19 context, based on a semi-structured literature review approach of sources published between March and August 2020, both in academic journals and consultancy companies’ reports. Aspects such as agile resilience and recovery through rebuilding operations, rethinking the organization, acceleration of the adoption of digitalization, and adapted marketing responses are discussed with a managerial lens.