COVID‐19 Pandemic: The Interplay Between Firm Disruption and Managerial Attention Focus

Ghobadian, Abby; Han, Tian; Zhang, Xuezhi; O'Regan, Nicholas; Troise, Ciro; Bresciani, Stefano; Narayanan, Vadake

Abstract

Pandemics and epidemics occur regularly, yet their impact on firm behaviours is under-researched. COVID-19 provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of a once-in-a-century pandemic – given its scope, swift spread, health and economic devastation – on firms’ behaviours. Attention is the critical and initial step of the environmental adaptation process. In this paper, we draw on two complementary theories – contingency and attention-based view – and examine the relationship between disruption experienced by firms and their COVID-19 attention focus – a sudden exogenous shock. Industry environments may influence which signals attract managerial attention; hence, we examine if firm disruption–COVID-19 attention focus is moderated by industry dynamism. Drawing on the publicly available data and using a sample of 1,861 US and 1,154 Chinese firms – two diametrically opposite situational contexts – we test the generalizability of our hypotheses. We find a positive relationship between firm disruption and COVID-19 attention focus for the US sample and that industry dynamism negatively moderates this relationship. In the case of Chinese firms, these relationships were insignificant. Further analysis using topic modelling revealed that business–government relationships accounted for this difference.

Citation

Ghobadian, A., Han, T., Zhang, X., O'Regan, N., Troise, C., Bresciani, S., & Narayanan, V. (2022). COVID‐19 Pandemic: The Interplay Between Firm Disruption and Managerial Attention Focus. British Journal of Management, 33(1), 390-409. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12556

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 7, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Oct 29, 2021
• Publication Date: 2022-01
• Deposit Date: Nov 15, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 30, 2023
• Journal: British Journal of Management
• Print ISSN: 1045-3172
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-8551
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 390-409
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12556
• Keywords: Management of Technology and Innovation; Strategy and Management; General Business, Management and Accounting
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/6724324
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8551.12556
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Ghobadian, A., Han, T., Zhang, X., O'Regan, N., Troise, C., Bresciani, S. and Narayanan, V. (2021), COVID-19 Pandemic: The Interplay Between Firm Disruption and Managerial Attention Focus. Brit J Manage. , which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12556. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.