The influence of organizational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on employee outcomes

Abstract

[...]they deal with pressures from different groups of stakeholders (e.g., customers and employees) with multiple and often conflicting needs or demands. Because organizational resources to address these demands are limited, these different groups of stakeholders are not equal to top managers. Customers, as external stakeholders, have economic power over the firm (i.e., if they stop paying for products or services, organizations will suffer financially or even cease to exist;Stevens etal., 2005). [...]how organizations respond to the competing needs, provided the needs are urgent and important, depends on the relative power of the stakeholder groups (Westphal & Zajac, 2001). According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 10% of universities were planning to instruct online, whereas 32% were proposing a hybrid model, and 53% were planning to instruct in person as of July 20, 2020 (Chronicle Staff, 2020). According to social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, employees feel obligated to reciprocate the treatment they receive from their organizations (Blau, 1964;Gouldner, 1960).