Changes in Corporate Responsibility Management during COVID-19 Crisis and Their Effects on Business Resilience: An Empirical Study of Swiss and German Companies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the activities and performance of companies worldwide. This article examines in what ways corporate responsibility management and corporate responsibility reporting activities have changed during the COVID-19 crisis in Switzerland and Germany, and how corporate responsibility management is related to aspects of business resilience in terms of maintaining expected financial performance during the COVID-19 crisis in Swiss companies. To answer these questions, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of company reports of the top 10 Swiss and German companies in terms of market capitalization, as well as a quantitative survey among Swiss managers. Our results show that during the period under consideration, (i) a majority of the companies analyzed in Switzerland and Germany expanded their sustainability reporting, both overall and in all sustainability dimensions; (ii) there is a tendency for corporate responsibility management to move away from upstream and downstream sustainability topics and focus more on in-house sustainability topics; and (iii) there is a correlation between the two corporate responsibility topics of local recruitment and occupational health and expected financial performance as an aspect of maintained business resilience in times of crisis.