Crises as Factors of Change in Enterprise Management : Evidence from Covid-19 Pandemic

A crisis is an unplanned process that includes a sequence of phenomena that take place over a specific period of time and disturb the dynamic balance between an enterprise and its environment (as well as its existence). The emergence of a crisis is a consequence of the impact of risk as an attribute of the functioning and development of each enterprise. The nature of a crisis means that a specific or potential event may cause a significant threat to a company’s operations and negatively affect its ability to achieve its goals (Krzakiewicz 2008, p. 11). The inevitable occurrence of crisis situations in contemporary organizations gives rise to the need of their early detection, identification, and skillful overcoming. The causes of crises may have their sources in the abnormal courses of economic processes or result from the impact of non-economic factors. The sources of crises can be related to both external factors (independent of the enterprise) and those that are internal (mostly dependent on the enterprise). The global economic crisis at the turn of the first and second decades of the 21st century was a consequence of typical economic factors that were mainly caused by the excessive and unjustified risk-taking by the financial institutions that operated within the global financial system. The pandemic crisis that was related to the emergence and rapid spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus was an unprecedented example of the impact of non-economic factors that have had a huge impact on the functioning of the global economic and social system.COVID-19 has changed – and will change even more – the paradigms of social and economic life as well as the ways that companies do business. In particular managers and entrepreneurs will have to be open to redesigning their organizational models but also to developing a new mindset that can allow them to ‘lead’ their companies and no longer just ‘manage’ them (Bechky, Milliken 2020, pp. 1-4): something that requires focus, clear objectives, and (above all) shared objectives (Baldwin, Weder 2020). Effectively alternating hard and soft skills will, therefore, be the keystone for facing the changes of the context of a post-COVID future that is as complex and uncertain as ever (Shehzard, Xiaoxing, Kazouz 2020). It will be necessary to combine the visions of entrepreneurs with greater orientations toward soft skills, be prepared to refocus business strategies, and reorganize the work of their people. We should therefore all begin to imagine versatile and responsive companies that are capable of making the tools of change management and risk management their axes in the bag in every case. How can we intervene to quickly accompany a company on such a challenging path of change? On which aspects of the company will we need to be focused in order to implement the appropriate behaviors for dealing with the context discontinuities? The purpose of this study is to present the mechanisms of the impact of a crisis on a business-management process that is based on the COVID-19 pandemic. This goal was achieved by answering the following research questions (which also outline the structure of the study): 1. What is the evolution in enterprise management? 2. What was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the functioning of the economy and enterprise management? 3. How have the mechanisms of value creation by business models changed, and what characterizes the new leadership model?