Publications
Publications
- 2020
- HBS Working Paper Series
Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim and Hui (Stacie) Wang
Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp market decline while raising heterogeneous responses across companies related to their employees, supply chain, and repurposing of operations to provide needed products and services. We study whether during the 2020 COVID-19 induced market crash, investors differentiated across companies based on their human capital, supply chain, and products and service response. Using data derived from natural language processing applied to news coverage of corporate responses to the coronavirus crisis for 3,023 companies around the world, we find that more positive sentiment around a company’s response is associated with less negative returns. This is especially true for companies with more salient responses and in industries that those responses are more likely to represent a credible commitment to their stakeholders.
Keywords
Human Capital; Supply Chain; Crisis Management; Operations; Esg; Covid-19; Coronavirus; Crisis Response Plans; Crisis; Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Esg Ratings; Leadership & Corporate Accountability; Big Data; Machine Learning; Investor Behavior; Institutional Investors; Corporate Performance; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact; Human Capital; Supply Chain; Operations; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Performance; United States; Europe; Asia; North America; Latin America
Citation
Cheema-Fox, Alex, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, and Hui (Stacie) Wang. "Corporate Resilience and Response During COVID-19." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-108, April 2020. (Revised September 2020.)
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