Management The COVID Effect

For years business schools have produced graduates competent in management theory and its several areas of specialization. Understanding business, government, and civil society and how these segments operate and interact in the context of business and management are also covered in business curricula. Emphasis is placed on understanding the critical areas of ethics, sustainability, cultural differences, and globalization.

As dynamic as the management environment might have been over the years, the COVID-19 pandemic has redefined any number of paradigms, and many of these changes are sufficiently long term as to be perceived as ‘permanent’. There is a need for students and instructors to consider, reflect, analyze, and debate what this pandemic has done to management.

This is the purpose of Management: The COVID Effect. Whether instructing in a traditional sense or, more likely in an on-line paradigm, this book provides the basis from which teams can debate the new issues that are confronting business – the generator of our economy – issues for which there are growing multiple stakeholder interests and no straightforward answers.

This companion reader is intended for use in concert with any management textbook.

Each case study or scenario could be used as supportive material in concert with a traditional text, or individually as discussion group material, group assignments, term assignments, or examination material.

Part I considers how the COVID-19 global pandemic changes each of the basic functions of management – planning, organizing, leading, and controlling; and four areas of specialization including: forms of business ownership, accounting and finance, human resources and organizational behavior, and marketing.

Each case study focuses on one of the above concepts with the view to provoke thought and discussion around how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed how managers must adjust to their new environments and new challenges. The material is intended to cause students to think about what has been changed by COVID-19, and what are the implications of that change.

Part II explores the broader aspects of management concepts that transverse the three sectors – public, private, and civil society: including the interaction of business and government, stakeholders, globalization, and ethics and sustainability.

These case studies are more complex in that the subject matter is broader and touches on topics that span the implication of technology, the role of government, collaboration and lobbying practices, privacy, the public interest, and profit generation versus the public good. Each of these case studies is intended to provoke debate and discussion regarding what is critical to the survival of businesses and other organizations as they navigate through this pandemic.

Part III is a selection of shorter case studies that provide ‘scenarios’ representative of what is happening in our world as this pandemic plays out. Each scenario while brief covers multiple themes. These cases are designed specifically to generate discussion on such topics as:

• Business and personal ethics
• Health and Safety
• Regulation and enforcement, and responsibility and accountability
• Business or organizational modeling and structural change
• Downsizing or ‘rightsizing’
• Recruitment and hiring practices
• Privacy and technology
• Performance management
• Risk management and strategic planning
• Market shift & supply chain
• Organization culture
• Customer service
• Labor shortages & service delivery
• Volunteerism, and social media
• Landlord/tenancy relations
• Employer/employee relations.