COVID-19 Research in Business and Management: A Review and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has generated voluminous research in mainstream business and management, there remains a need for a robust state-of-the-art review of the current diverse streams of research that have scattered across different fields. To address this lacuna in the current growing body of research, we conducted a systematic review of 152 COVID-related papers in the field of business and management published in top-tier journals to identify the impact of the pandemic on business activities. Based on the review, we classified the topical foci of the selected studies under three broad categories (i.e., corporate strategy, corporate design and culture, and contextual environment) and 13 sub-categories (e.g., CoVsumption, uncertainty asphyxiation, and normalization of meta-firms), which are the recurring themes in the papers. We correspondingly outline new avenues for future research and the theoretical and practical implications of this study. The findings revealed that, during the pandemic, adaptive strategies to survive the pandemic took precedence over shaping strategies to build post-COVID realities.