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Corporate social responsibility CSR and the

COVID-19
(CSR) and the COVID-19 pandemic: pandemic

organizational and
managerial implications 315
Archie B. Carroll Received 8 July 2021
Revised 10 July 2021
Management, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA Accepted 10 July 2021

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, to provide an overview of the COVID-19 pandemic and
its holistic impacts and implications for organizations and management. Second, to report what organizations
have been doing via their corporate social responsibilities about the pandemic. Research implications for
academics are offered.
Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken in this article was to survey the literature and news
reports about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and to summarize results. Further, the approach was to
analyze these findings using my four-part CSR construct examining economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic
impacts, implications, and responsibilities.
Findings – It was found that the COVID-19 pandemic has had important impacts and implications for most
spheres or sectors of the business world. Employees, consumers and communities have been the most
significantly affected, but other stakeholder groups in societies are being impacted as well. The global
pandemic is putting CSR to the test, and the emerging evidence supports the idea that many companies are
striving to reset their CSR thinking and initiatives to accommodate this crisis and to meet what the public
expects of them.
Originality/value – Much of this paper involved reporting findings that have appeared in the literature and
news. The originality involved interpreting and analyzing stakeholders affected, and how managers have been
responding to these challenges. Strategic recommendations are offered.
Keywords COVID-19 pandemic, Employee stakeholders, Consumer stakeholders, Communities, Corporate
social responsibility (CSR), Economic, Legal, Ethical, Philanthropic responsibilities, Non-profits
Paper type Viewpoint

The COVID-19 pandemic begs the question of what businesses and companies are going to do
to respond to this worldwide crisis that has no apparent end point. As it turns out, many
companies have already begun taking action and making decisions to deal with the
pandemic. The purpose of this position paper is to offer observations and commentary about
the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the coronavirus pandemic with
particular attention to organizational and managerial implications. No attempt will be made
to review all that has been done so far or has been written on this topic as each day provides
new revelations. Following this line of thought, a brief background and description of the
issue will be presented and then a discussion of many of the implications the COVID-19
pandemic has had on organizations and management with a particular focus on companies’
corporate social responsibility (CSR) positions on the topic. This is an enormous challenge,
inasmuch as the pandemic is ongoing during this writing and business organizations come in
all sizes, ages, and industry sectors, but many of these thoughts will apply regardless of these
variables and the actual length of the crisis.
Journal of Strategy and
After a brief description of the COVID-19 pandemic and its general impact on business, Management
society and the world, more discussion will be provided by relating it to the topic of corporate Vol. 14 No. 3, 2021
pp. 315-330
social responsibility (CSR). It is not possible to discuss all these impacts and implications, so © Emerald Publishing Limited
1755-425X
this discussion will be restricted to business organizations and what businesses are or could DOI 10.1108/JSMA-07-2021-0145
JSMA be doing to fulfill their sense of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the face of these
14,3 threats, impacts and implications. Further, I will propose CSR strategies, policies, or decisions
companies might seriously consider if they are interested in being perceived as good-to-
excellent corporate citizens.
To organize the discussion of impacts and implications, my four-part CSR
conceptualization provides a reasonably ordered way to think about the categories in
which COVID-19-related effects and consequences are occurring. In my previous writings on
316 CSR, I have argued that businesses have four categories of social responsibility they should
address: economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic/discretionary responsibilities (Carroll,
1979, 1991). Taken together, these four categories constitute a broadly conceived view of CSR
that businesses have to society and these categories or types of CSR also lend themselves
nicely to conversing about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact and implications for
businesses and their stakeholders. More will be said about CSR and the four-part construct of
CSR, generally, after a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and the types of impacts it has
had on organizations, society, and the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic

Without going into a complete history of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is useful to provide some
preliminary realities about this issue that has impacted the world, organizations and people in
all walks of life. COVID-19, as it has come to be called, is the novel human coronavirus disease.
It has come to be recognized as the fifth documented pandemic since the flu pandemic of 1918.
COVID-19 initially was reported in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread worldwide.
Because the virus is highly contagious, it rapidly spreads and continuously evolves in the
human population (Liu et al., 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the
epidemic to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020 and
acknowledged that it was a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (Chauhan, 2020). During the first six
months of 2020, COVID-19 progressed from being an isolated disease in a specific region of
China to a worldwide epidemic that has brought countries to a slowdown, lockdowns, and
pressed hospital and medical systems to a dangerous edge, and brought the world’s economy
into a recession (American Journal of Managed Care, 2020). By January, 2021, close to 2
million people had died of the virus worldwide and some estimates run even higher as case
reporting varies around the world (Overberg et al., 2021).
COVID-19 quickly spread around the globe, and it has posed massive health, economic,
social, and environmental challenges to the entire human population. By Fall, 2020, new virus
cases were surging across the US, Europe, and globally (Mann, 2020). COVID-19’s scope of
impact has ranged from the world, to various countries, to cities, and to various stakeholder
sectors of societies, to organizations of all types and sizes, and especially businesses which
represent the heartbeat of most economies. Before discussing the impacts and strategies
companies might take as they face these enormous threats, it is useful to discuss the topic of
CSR, in general, and how companies might broadly conceive their CSR as they address
COVID-19 challenges.

CSR as a company strategy or posture

A major purpose of this paper is to discuss CSR and the question of what companies are doing
or are supposed to be doing in the face of the pandemic crisis. To facilitate this, however, some
general discussion of CSR is necessary to establish a basis for analysis. In the post-World
War II era, the CSR discussion was significantly initiated by Frank Abrams and Howard
Bowen. Abrams saw business management becoming a profession and contended that with it
came a strong sense of responsibility to the community. Abrams held that business managers
were becoming professionals because they were realizing that they have duties and CSR and the
responsibilities that extended beyond those to company owners (Abrams, 1951). In his 1953 COVID-19
book, Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, Howard Bowen became the most well-known
advocate of CSR during this period when he posed that oft-quoted question “what
pandemic
responsibilities to society may businessmen reasonably be expected to assume?” (Bowen,
1953). As the title of Bowen’s work suggests, businesswomen were few in number during
this time.
Most of the early work on CSR began in academic circles as scholars were attempting to 317
better articulate what the concept meant. Consequently, considerable definitional work began
in the 1960s by forward-thinking academics. In 1960, Keith Davis posed the question, “Can
business afford to ignore social responsibilities?” (Davis, 1960). Though admitting that social
responsibility (SR) was a nebulous idea, he went on to define it as “businessmen’s decisions
and actions taken for reasons at least partially beyond the firm’s direct economic and
technical interest” (Davis, 1960, p. 70). Similarly, Joseph McGuire held that “the idea of social
responsibility supposes that the corporation has not only economic and legal obligations, but
also certain responsibilities to society which extend beyond these obligations” (McGuire,
1963, p. 144). William C. Frederick was concerned with the emerging new era of business
power, and he asserted that “social responsibility, in the final analysis implies a public
posture toward society’s economic and human resources and a willingness to see that those
resources are utilized for broad social ends and not simply for the narrowly circumscribed
interests of private persons and firms” (Frederick, 1960, p. 60). A more recent, but general,
definition of CSR was presented by Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon when they asserted that
CSR embraced the “policies and practices of corporations that reflect business responsibility
for some of the wider societal good. Yet the precise manifestation and direction of the
responsibility lie at the discretion of the corporation” (Matten and Moon, 2008).
These were excellent general definitions of CSR. There were a number of other, all-purpose
definitions of CSR that surfaced over the following decade. In my construct of CSR, my
objective was to give the concept of CSR more specific analytical or categorical delineations
and to spell out more specifically the nature of the responsibilities business had to society that
composed CSR. This quest led me in 1979 to articulate a definition of CSR in which I argued
that “the social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical and
discretionary (philanthropic) expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in
time” (Carroll, 1979, p. 499). In 1991, I configured this four-part construct of CSR into a
“pyramid of corporate social responsibility” with the economic responsibility at the base
because of its foundational nature in business organizations. CSR expert, Jeremy Moon,
characterized the CSR Pyramid as “one of the most famous CSR frameworks” (Moon, 2014,
p. 21). This set of four responsibilities, representing a CSR definition and depiction as a
graphic model, composing total CSR, created a conceptual infrastructure that helped to
delineate and frame businesses’ responsibilities to society (Carroll, 1991). In later research
studies, these four categories of social responsibility were validated by experts who were
capable of distinguishing among the four components, and a factor analysis concluded that
there are four empirically related, but conceptually independent, components of CSR. Further
surveys of business executives also found that the relative values or weights of each of the
components as implicitly depicted approximated the relative degree of importance placed on
the four components (Aupperle et al., 1985; Pinkston and Carroll, 1996; Edmondson and
Carroll, 1999).
In the new millennium, a study of thirty-seven different definitions of CSR conducted by
Dahlsrud (2008) was limited to definitions that had appeared in the literature between 1980
and 2003. Using content analysis, he found that most definitions were consistently referring
to five dimensions – an environment dimension, a social dimension, an economic dimension, a
stakeholder dimension, and a voluntariness dimension (Dahlsrud, 2008). As it turns out,
JSMA though my four categories of CSR are conceptualized differently; all four address or embrace
14,3 each of these dimensions in one or more of their economic, legal, ethical, or philanthropic
aspects. This observation made me more comfortable using the four-part schema in ordering
my discussion.
Between the late 1990s and the 2000s, a number of competing and complementary
frameworks arrived in the literature attempting to differentiate CSR from these newly
emerging concepts. The primary competitors to CSR that ascended before the millennium
318 included business ethics, stakeholder management, corporate citizenship, and sustainability
(Carroll, 2015). Beginning in the 2000s, several others became popular including creating
shared value (CRV) and purpose-driven business (Carroll and Brown, 2018). Since each of
these has more in common with CSR than differences, no attempt will be made to differentiate
them from CSR’s impacts and implications.
Because of its consistency with Dahlsrud’s findings and because the four-part CSR
definitional construct has been found to be useful in both conceptual and empirical research,
it seemed like an effective conceptual scheme to employ in discussing businesses’ social
responsibilities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the following section, COVID-19’s
impacts and businesses’ responsibilities will be discussed employing the economic, legal,
ethical, and philanthropic categories to lend a form of CSR structure to the dialogue.

COVID-19’s impact, implications and business’s CSR

COVID-19 has impacted the world at a number of different levels and in a number of different
sectors. It has impacted the natural world and its environments, continents, countries, states,
and communities. It has also impacted virtually all of the different major industries or sectors
of societies – businesses, stock markets, government, military, religious institutions, public
and private schools, nonprofit organizations, higher education and so on. Though the concept
of CSR could be adapted to apply at most of these levels and in most of these sectors, the focus
of this article will be on businesses since that is the primary focal point of CSR. But, even if we
limit the discussion in this way, space will only allow touching upon a few of the impacts,
implications, and responsibilities.
The business sector may be seen as a collection of private, commercially-oriented (profit-
oriented) organizations ranging in size from one-family proprietorships to corporate giants.
Between these two extremes are many medium-sized proprietorships, partnerships, and
corporations. Much of this discussion will be on larger, highly visible corporations, but
medium- and smaller-businesses have been seriously affected by the pandemic as well. When
we think of COVID-19’s impact on societies, it is evident that stakeholders are being affected
that have closer ties with businesses. This means that employees, consumers, communities,
competitors, suppliers and the natural environment stand out as the most likely stakeholders
affected. With these parameters in mind, let us explore the impacts and advised
responsibilities according to the four-part construct of CSR, examining the foundational
issues of economics and law, first, and then that of ethics and philanthropy. It should be kept
in mind, moreover, that most of these four categories overlap with each other and that ethical
considerations are inherent in all of them.

Economic impacts, implications and responsibilities

Economic impacts and implications for business are foundational and in the COVID-19
pandemic, there has been a sizable and devastating effect on general economies, specific
industries or sectors, and virtually all businesses, especially small businesses. The economic
category represents the heart and soul of free-enterprise systems and, if considered from the
perspective of individual businesses, represents a fundamental condition or requirement for
survival and sustainability. Initially, it may seem unusual to think about economics and
economic expectations as a part of social responsibility, but it is maintained here that it is CSR and the
indispensable because society expects, indeed requires, businesses to produce products, COVID-19
services, and jobs and be able to sustain themselves, and the only way this is possible is by
being profitable and able to incentivize owners or shareholders to invest and have sufficient
pandemic
resources to continue in operation. In addition, business is expected to deliver these outcomes
with financial and operational efficiency, effectiveness, and with synchronized strategic
decision making.
In today’s hypercompetitive global business environment, economic performance and 319
sustainability have become urgent and obligatory objectives. Those firms that are not
successful in their economic or financial spheres go out of business and other responsibilities
that may be incumbent upon them become moot considerations. Therefore, the economic
responsibility is a baseline requirement that must be met in a competitive business world
(Carroll, 2016) and this is no more evident than in our current pandemic world where many
businesses are striving to survive, much less prosper. We can no longer take businesses’
continuity for granted like we sometimes did in the pre-COVID-19 period.
Before delving into business’s economic responsibilities as a part of CSR, it is necessary to
address the impact of COVID-19 on economies, generally, and companies, specifically. Due to
lockdowns in many countries, states and cities, businesses in many sectors have been
significantly and sometimes, irreparably, damaged along with their supply chains, their
ability to provide goods and services and especially, jobs. Many of these businesses have
failed and gone out of existence.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been and continues to be an unprecedented financial shock
to global economies. It has created concurrent disruptions in an interrelated world economy.
The infectious disease has reduced the supply of labor. Productivity has been affected as well.
Business closures, suspensions, and lockdowns have caused disruptions in supply. Layoffs
and the loss of income from illness, confinements, unemployment and deteriorated economic
predictions have reduced household consumption and business firms’ investments.
We often have been told that businesses abhor uncertainty. Perilous uncertainty has
characterized the route, degree, and outcomes of the pandemic and this has presented a brutal
cycle of business, consumer, and employee insecurity, and financial conditions being
constricted. This has resulted in job losses and diminished investments on the part of
business. These conditions have posed significant challenges for analyzing and
understanding its economic effects. To confound matters, economies have experienced
non-linear effects, cross-country spillovers and significant uncertainly about future economic
conditions (Chudik et al., 2020).
In addition to reshaping world trade and causing the usual financial impacts on business
(Schlesinger, 2020), it is useful to note some of the human costs of the economic contraction.
The COVID-19 economy has created a deep divide between the haves and have-nots in
societies. Those who are well-educated and well-off, often in businesses linked to the digital
economy or supplying necessities, have done much better. On the other hand, lower-wage
workers with less education, sometimes tied to old-line businesses and regions linked to
tourism and public gatherings, have done much less well (Morath et al., 2020). According to
the World Bank, extreme poverty has risen as the pandemic has tipped over 100 million
people into living on less than $2 per day (Zumbrun, 2020). A number of the industry sectors
that have been hit the hardest include transportation, entertainment, recreation, restaurants
and bars, and travel.
Though many CSR writers do not speak often of the economic responsibility, as it is often
taken for granted, this category of responsibility has become highlighted and urgent during,
throughout, and after the pandemic. The economic responsibility is often framed as making
money for owners, and this is a worthy objective, but in the pandemic, becoming financially
sustainable is interrelated with continuing to provide the goods, services and jobs that
JSMA consumers and employees need. Thus, one could easily argue that businesses’ economic
14,3 responsibilities undergird all the others and inevitably must be addressed during and
following the pandemic.
Since the economic, or financial, responsibility of the firm is typically associated with
sound strategic decision-making emanating from the board of directors and top-level
executives, it is imperative that governance responsibilities be addressed. In this context,
Lynn Paine has set forth important new ways of looking at corporate governance and each of
320 these is consistent with CSR-thinking that is needed today (Paine, 2020). Paine proposes more
structured attention to stakeholders. Boards are under greater pressure to monitor
stakeholder expectations, especially from employees. Boards will need to pay more
attention to how business and society intersect. The pandemic has highlighted the tighter
relationship between societal problems and businesses’ sustainability. Boards will need to
pay closer attention to executive compensation. The pandemic has exposed glaring
compensation inequities across society and within organizations (Paine, 2020). More
deliberative decision making will be needed. There are no longer simple decisions when
COVID-19 factors present themselves in strategic decisions. Finally, more attention will be
needed to address board composition regarding race and ethnicity. This imperative would be
in response to the global outcry regarding racial injustice that occurred during the pandemic
and that companies can ill afford to ignore. In short, the board’s job and strategic decision-
making responsibilities have become exceedingly more demanding and it is expected that
these pressures will outlive the current outbreak of the pandemic (Paine, 2020). Each of these
suggestions align with economic responsibilities as a part of CSR expectations.
Another important management action with respect to the economic responsibility, and all
the others as well, is the need for speed – acting fast. One of the greatest lessons from the
COVID-19 pandemic, so far, is that speed matters (McKay, 2020). This applies to all levels of
governments and public health authorities being prepared, as well as businesses. The
window of opportunity on rapidly spreading viruses is short. Being caught unprepared has
been disastrous and this has applied at all levels of responsibility. If public health officials
were caught flat-footed, and this is supposed to be their specialty, it is no surprise that
businesses were unprepared as well. Anticipating every possible emergency is extremely
difficult and expensive, of course, but one of the most important schoolings from the
pandemic has been that planning and preparation at all levels must be better in the future,
especially for health-related crises such as pandemic viruses. Crisis management schemes
must be anticipatory and proactive and this should become a permanent and prioritized part
of strategic and operational decision-making. It has been my observation for decades that
management teams have not integrated crisis management thinking to their strategies as
much as they should have.
In the final analysis, individual companies’ ability to respond effectively to the COVID-19
economy may rest on four key indicators in the general economy (Crabtree and Berg, 2020).
These include:
(1) levels of public consumption; that is, the percentage of citizens who report buying
goods and services in public places;
(2) citizens’ confidence they can protect themselves from the virus;
(3) percentage of citizens who support full-time, in-person schooling – a condition that
has significant workforce implications—allowing parents who cannot work at home
to be able to maintain full employment; and
(4) citizens’ willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as it comes available to them.
These four conditions were identified in research by the Franklin Templeton-Gallup
 Economics of Recovery study, and it can be seen that consumers and employees are CSR and the
key to the recovery (Crabtree and Berg, 2020). COVID-19
pandemic
Legal impacts, implications and responsibilities
Societies have not only sanctioned economic systems by permitting and expecting businesses
to assume the productive role, as a key ingredient in the social contract, but they have also
laid down the ground rules or framework under which businesses are expected to operate. 321
Thus, the laws and regulations define the legal responsibilities that businesses have to
society and its many stakeholders and these are superimposed on all economic activities
(Carroll, 1979). Most of the issues that arise in the legal realm are designed to protect society
from negative impacts, adverse actions, decisions, and policies in which businesses may
engage (Carroll, 2015, p. 90). Law may be thought of as constituting the “rules of the game” of
business and also may be thought of as “codified ethics” inasmuch as many of the laws and
regulations were preceded by ethical alarms (discrimination, environmental pollution, unsafe
products, dangerous working conditions, and so on). Consequently, society expects and
requires businesses to fulfill its economic mission within the framework of standards
mandated by societies’ legal systems.
Interestingly, since the pandemic has been upon the world for such a short period of time,
enough time has not passed to fully observe what legal issues will be created by the
pandemic. Knowing the litigious societies in which we now live, however, it is projected that
these legal issues and challenges will rise sharply especially in the workforce but also in the
supply chains and the manufacture, delivery and marketing of products and services.
Doubtless, regulations will rise at all levels, not just local requirements for wearing masks in
public, social distancing, or not organizing in large groups. Immigration laws have already
been affected and may continue into the future. This raises serious issues for industries that
have depended heavily on both unskilled and skilled workers. It is highly likely that new
regulations regarding product, service and employment safety will quickly become a part of
the new workplace economy. Worker health and well-being will become center stage as legal
and ethical issues. Most organizations are engaging in and predicting increases in remote
work and this phenomenon will raise numerous legal liability issues as workers convert their
homes into offices and have to navigate and balance work and personal responsibilities that
inevitably will arise and possibly conflict in remote work circumstances.
Some of the legal questions being now raised at the governance level of businesses, hint at
what responsibilities businesses have and are anticipating. Conference Board (2020), for
example, has identified the following as important questions that may be driving businesses’
legal responsibilities at the strategic level:
What are the legal and governance implications of the COVID-19 outbreak?
What should companies and boards be responsible for doing during the crisis?
How can corporate law departments stay on top of the latest directives from federal, state and local
authorities?
How will boards balance “survivability” with “sustainability” knowing that their decisions will be
judged by multiple stakeholders (Conference Board, 2020)?
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a number of regulations
and laws have become critical during the pandemic and the responsible company will learn
these and abide by them. The Public Health Service Act forms the foundation for legal
authority for responding to public emergencies authorizing the Health and Human Services
(HHS) Secretary to take key actions in assisting the states to meet health emergencies,
maintaining the Strategic National Stockpile, and controlling communicable diseases. Also,
JSMA the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authority and responsibility to protect and
14,3 promote the public health by, among other things, ensuring the safety and effectiveness of
human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and ensuring the
safety and security of our nation’s food supply (CDC, 2020a). To fulfill its legal
responsibilities, businesses will need to be attentive to the regulations and laws that are
declared by these and other authorized government bodies. As the CDC has put it,
“workplaces and businesses” will need to “plan, prepare and respond” (CDC, 2020b).
322 Included in the legal responsibilities of business during the pandemic is the expectation
that companies will deal fairly with the increasing number of lawsuits that are hitting
employers. Companies are being and will continue to be sued by workers’ families who
believe their family members contracted deadly cases of COVID-19 on the job. Some major
employers with deep pockets have been sued for negligence or wrongful death since the
pandemic began impacting workplaces. It is being alleged that the companies failed to protect
workers and should compensate their families. Survivors are also suing for medical bills,
future earnings and other damages. In their defense, companies are claiming they took
actions to protect the workers, including screening workers for symptoms, requiring that
masks be worn, sanitizing workplaces, requiring social distancing, and restricting the
number of customers permitted inside their buildings (Adamy, 2020). Liability questions are
increasingly being raised, and it is not surprising that some companies have decided to close
down rather than face the inevitable lawsuits they will face. Businesses’ legal responsibilities
are likely to grow steadily and socially responsible companies must be prepared to be
transparent, follow necessary safety protocols, and settle these cases fairly.
In short, from a CSR perspective, businesses are expected to fully and faithfully respond to
their legal requirements and regulations, both those written and implied, towards all
stakeholders. In the next several years these and related questions will be particularly
stressful as companies seek to reconfigure and reset the balance between their financial and
legal responsibilities along with ethics and philanthropy.

Ethical impacts, implications and responsibilities

Laws and regulations are essential but are not sufficient. Ethical responsibilities of business
are needed to embrace those standards and practices that are expected or prohibited by
society even though they may not be codified into laws or regulations – yet, in many cases.
Ethical responsibilities embrace businesses adhering to the spirit of the law as well as the
letter of the law. Ethical responsibilities embody the full scope of norms, standards, values
and expectations that reflect what consumers, employees, shareholders, the community, and
other stakeholders regard as fair, just and consistent with respect for and protection of
stakeholders’ moral interests and rights (Carroll, 1991). Superimposed on these normal,
everyday, ethical expectations and norms of society and stakeholder groups are the implicit
levels of ethical performance suggested by a consideration of the great universal ethical
principles of moral philosophy, such as justice, rights, utilitarianism, virtue, care, and other
relevant values.
Moral philosophers are already debating how their fields can help navigate the ethical
predicaments of the COVID-19 crisis, from rationing medical care, restarting the economy, to
helping organizations be prepared for future dilemmas (Goldstein, 2020). Generally speaking,
the philosophers to date have tended to do what they typically do – analyze different issues
and courses of action that might be taken by different philosophers or schools of ethical
thought. For example, how might the COVID-19 issues be dealt with by Aristotle, Immanuel
Kant, or John Stuart Mill? Each of them takes a different approach to most ethical issues as
one might also find when analyzing these issues from the standpoint of different ethical
theories – virtue, rights, justice, or utilitarianism.
 Though ethics issues and ethical responsibilities are being treated as a separate category CSR and the
of CSR here, it should be underscored that the ethical responsibility cuts through, or is infused COVID-19
into, the other responsibilities as well – economic, legal, and philanthropic. Ethics permeates
relationships with every stakeholder group with which business interacts. Virtually no
pandemic
business decision or policy is isolated from ethical implications and thus the ethical
responsibilities of business are deep and wide, especially during a pandemic, when so many
stakeholders are vulnerable and potentially harmed.
323
Impacts on employee stakeholders
Employees are one of the most important stakeholders that needs to be addressed from an
ethical point of view. Employees are the heart and soul of most businesses and it is easy to see
how economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities all touch upon employees.
I will focus on the ethical dimension in this section. To begin with, it should be made clear that
virtually any ethical decision or policy with respect to employee stakeholders will also likely
have an economic impact as well. Failure to apply ethical standards also may raise legal
difficulties.
What special risks, harms or threats accrue to employees as a result of the pandemic?
Many are laid off or furloughed. Many have their hours reduced. Many essential workers are
required to labor in dangerous or hazardous circumstances, e.g., health care workers, police
and fire workers, those who come into contact with the public, and those who have to work
from home thus rearranging their domestic lives to accommodate their work schedules. Many
parents of small children have been stressed trying to accommodate child care and
interrupted school schedules which alternate between online and in-person modalities. Not
only does COVID-19 amplify public fatigue but many categories of employees are exhausted
as well.
Generally speaking, businesses should make employee decisions that are appropriate for
the companies’ economic environments and should be ethically sensitive to employee
expectations as well. Protecting employee’s rights is a baseline response in this situation, and
ethical leaders will not be constrained by rules and regulations, but will search out
opportunities to do what is right and fair with respect to human resources. Employees have
been queried as to what are their most pressing concerns and the general categories of issues
include working remotely, workplace health and safety whether at work or at home,
quarantines, and child care (Feintzeig, 2020). With many schools closed or operating online,
this has placed extraordinary stress on working parents. In considering these circumstances,
President Trump signed a law temporarily expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act
(FMLA) protections that guaranteed paid sick leave for certain employees. Under the FMLA,
employees in quarantine, caring for stricken family members or with children whose schools
or day care programs have been closed are eligible for the initial two weeks of paid leave.
Some employees under limited circumstances could get an additional 10 weeks at partial pay
if they have lost child care because of school or day-care closures (Feintzeig, 2020, p. R7). The
ethical responsibility in these situations urges companies to fairly implement such
opportunities and perhaps extend them to help employees deal with these hardships.
Another aspect of this is for companies not to retaliate against employees who take
advantage of such programs.
Businesses should work assiduously to demonstrate that they truly value low-income,
low-educated, minority employees, and others that often are marginalized. There is
considerable evidence that these groups are being hit the hardest. Protests that have
erupted across the US and the world in 2020 in support of racial justice place challenging
expectations on companies to be ethically sensitive. In this arena, companies can reach out
and hire and promote more minority employees, pay employees a better or living wage,
JSMA provide paid sick and family leave, and of course, provide a safe and healthy workplace for
14,3 all workers not just the higher paid ones in nice offices. In addition, the companies can strive
to remake the C-suite by appointing more minority board members, more minority
executives on the leadership teams, and advocate for shareholder reforms (Walker, 2020,
p. 78).
Gender issues have arisen during the pandemic as well and these pose special ethical
responsibilities for companies to observe and act. As the virus has spread globally, a
324 disproportionate economic and social impact is being felt by women. In positions such as
nursing, healthcare, teachers, service industry workers, and flight attendants, the vast
majority are held by females. Many of these same women are being affected at home as well in
their roles as homemaking, caretaking, monitoring school children, becoming de facto home-
schoolers, and so on (Fox, 2020, pp. 44–46). To prevent gender inequality from worsening,
special consideration should be given to women’s roles in the workplace. Companies may not
be required to accommodate women in a legal sense, but an ethical sense of CSR should propel
companies towards their careful consideration.
Mental health issues among employees is another emerging category of human resource
ethics that has been spurred on by the pandemic. Employee burnout, stress and exhaustion
are among the most serious recurring issues. According to one staffing firm’s survey, it was
found that more than a third of professional employees feel more burned out than a year prior.
Mental health services have been lagging among business firms for years and perhaps the
recent pandemic will make them more aware and ethically sensitive to this issue (Kaye, 2020).
Since there is still some stigma attached to mental health issues, many employees are cautious
about raising these concerns. But this is a realm in which companies could take some creative
ethical leadership in meeting the needs of employees. A few companies have taken the lead on
this issue. For example, at the onset of the pandemic, Starbucks announced that it would offer
employees 20 sessions a year with a mental health therapist or coach. Other companies, such
as Target and Salesforce, have taken an alternative approach by offering web- or app-based
mental health resources to employees without charge. Other companies are eliminating
co-pays for mental health medical visits or making arrangements that they are eliminated by
their insurance companies (Kaye, 2020).

Impacts on consumer stakeholders

Consumers, like employees, have been the other major stakeholder group significantly
affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Typical consumer issues include the quality and safety
of their products and services along with advertising issues. As a result of the pandemic and
the interruption of supply chains, product availability has been a major issue affecting
consumers. Medical supplies for health care workers have been a serious problem. This
includes shortages of essentials such as personal protective equipment such as medical
masks, gloves, face shields and other items. Shortages of more substantial medical equipment
such as ventilators, hospital beds, and ICU beds, have also been a problem. Many of these
issues are continuing to be addressed. Various consumer goods for the average citizen also
have been in short supply such as sanitizing wipes, sanitizing sprays, paper products, diapers
and tissues. Supply chain disruptions, compounded by consumer hoarding, have created
these and related product shortages in grocery stores. Consumers have also been seriously
affected in terms of reduced hours, closings or lockdowns of restaurants, bars, and other
eating establishments that consumers have come to depend upon.
Businesses’ ethical responsibilities in the pandemic have become broad and deep and it is
necessary for CSR-proactive firms to give serious consideration to innovation-thinking and
entrepreneurship-thinking as they prepare to deal with their ethical responsibilities (Munro,
2020, p. 161). Ethical leadership will be essential.
Philanthropic impacts, implications and responsibilities CSR and the
Initially conceived as discretionary or voluntary social responsibilities, the discretionary COVID-19
responsibility category was retitled “philanthropic” because virtually all of business’s
responses in this arena take place in the name of philanthropy or business giving (Carroll,
pandemic
1991). To many, this category of CSR is the most important because it represents businesses
taking voluntary initiatives to help society on their own by spending or engaging company
resources. Indeed, to some analysts, the philanthropic category is synonymous with CSR.
Sometimes these voluntary initiatives are anchored in ethical logic and sometimes in strategic 325
logic. The ethical logic would focus on altruistic motives for philanthropy. The strategic logic
would focus on compatibility with business policies and bottom-line thinking. This latter
category represents what has come to be known as the “business case for CSR” (Carroll and
Shabana, 2010). Philanthropic activities are perceived by businesses as self-imposed and
voluntary, but publicly-expected “responsibilities” as companies attempt to “give back to
society” and/or be thought of by stakeholders as solid, reputable, corporate citizens. Thus,
corporate philanthropy is either “desired” or “expected” by society’s stakeholders.
Philanthropic contributions (charitable donations) and community relations activities are
the best examples of this category in which businesses seek to improve their communities
and societies. The magnitude and nature of these activities are voluntary or discretionary,
guided only by business’s desire to engage in social activities that are not mandated and not
required by law, but are generally expected of business, sometimes in an ethical sense but
often in a “good citizenship” sense (Carroll, 1991, 2015).
It is already evident that companies are being responsive to the needs arising due to
COVID-19. According to the Charities Aid Foundation of America, 70% of corporate funders
had increased their giving by mid-2020. Among this funding, 30% of funders broadened their
issue area focus, 78% provided immediate relief funding, and 32% increased their employees’
engagement in helping to shape their giving strategies. Nine in ten of those surveyed began
offering greater flexibility to existing grantees (Philanthropy News Digest, 2020).
In addition to increasing donations, COVID-19 and the pandemic will result in changes that
alter what companies are doing in this category. It has been reported that the pandemic has had
an especially hard impact on smaller nonprofits though some larger nonprofits have benefitted.
Early on it appears that both individuals and institutions are rethinking their approaches to
philanthropy or charitable donations. Following are some illustrations of how COVID-19 is
affecting this philanthropic category of CSR. Three types of philanthropy serve as examples –
emergency funding, less-restrictive grants, and backing minority nonprofits (Ward, 2020).
Emergency funding: The speed with which the pandemic occurred and grew has caused
many companies and philanthropists to create emergency funds and rethink how to get
resources into the appropriate hands more quickly. About 850 COVID-19 emergency-
response funds have been created in 2020 according to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Many companies use foundations through which to make donations. Communities
Foundation of Texas, for example, in combination with 30 other foundations and United
Ways have created a COVID-19 emergency-funding collaborative that employs a common
application to make it easier for nonprofits to request funds and for foundations to join
together on grants. Their hope is that more companies and donors will allocate some share of
their budgets to emergency funding as part of a standard operating procedure (Ward, 2020).
Less Restrictive Grants: Related to emergency funding, less restrictive grants have
increased when the pandemic spiked. Less restrictive requirements became important so
companies and donors would have more flexibility than was possible through their normal
operating procedures. In March, 2020, the Council on Foundations issued a pledge to make
new grants the least restrictive as possible in response to the crisis. A shift from narrow to
wide grant objectives would facilitate nonprofits as they strived to survive and make
philanthropy appropriately available (Ward, 2020).
JSMA Backing Minority Nonprofits: Another way that companies have been able to have a
14,3 relevant impact during the pandemic is through support of minority nonprofit organizations.
Research shows that donations tend to favor non-minority uses and a report on racial bias in
funding maintains that supporting Black-led nonprofits would help to address racial
inequities during the pandemic. The pandemic has disproportionately affected minority
communities and supporting Black-led organizations is one way to sustain a larger civil
rights movement and address pressing needs (Ward, 2020).
326 Whether businesses’ philanthropic donations are motivated by altruism or synchronizing
with business strategy for bottom-line results, significant opportunities are available for
companies to creatively target their contributions towards pressing pandemic-related issues.
From a community-oriented perspective, a focus on employees’ health and well-being,
poverty, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities should become priorities.
Coincidentally, each of these themes is a part of the U. N. Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) (United Nations SDGs, 2020), and they represent enduring not just crisis issues. This
may require some innovative thinking; however, when a crisis such as this unprecedented
pandemic occurs, it provides strong justification for reexamining, redirecting, or renewing
what companies traditionally have been doing.
In closing this section, it is useful to report lessons that are being learned during the
COVID-19 crisis that address the philanthropic category of CSR. According to one major
report on COVID-19 relief, more than 500 companies drove $640 million in crisis funding
donations and also provided support through volunteering, small acts of goodness, and
corporate grants to 79,000 global causes during Spring 2020. In this report, the lessons
learned included these: (1) engage employees through donation matching programs;
(2) provide flexible funding; (3) build shared value partnerships; (4) employ creativity in using
companies’ unique assets, and; (5) adopt a nonprofit (Paz, 2020).

Concluding comments
It has become apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts and
implications for most spheres or sectors of the business world. The business world, of course,
is composed of numerous stakeholders—actual people—who are impaired by the adverse
effects of the crisis. Employees, consumers and communities are at the top of the list of those
significantly affected, but many other stakeholder groups in societies are being impacted as
well. An optimistic side of this story is that at no other time in recent history have companies
had an opportunity, indeed, a strong mandate, to ramp up, rethink, and possibly reconfigure
their CSR strategies, policies and actions. The global pandemic is putting CSR to the test, and
much of the emerging evidence supports the idea that many companies are striving to reset
their CSR thinking and initiatives and are seeing that the public expects them to meet
the tests.
Developing an energized reorientation towards CSR and COVID-19, decisions must
begin at the board and top management levels. There needs to be significant commitment
and buy-in by these groups if improved practices and results are to follow. According to
sustainability consultant Coro Strandberg, CSR commitments and practices can reside on a
continuum from “CSR Lite,” “CSR compliant,” “CSR Strategic,” “CSR Integrated,” to “Deep
CSR” (Strandberg, 2002). Using this continuum, companies will need to inhabit the
“strategic → integrated → Deep” end of the continuum to provide the kind of innovative
leadership that will be required to deal with COVID-19. These strategic positions will
require more significant roles for stakeholders, with stakeholder engagement becoming the
norm. At the same time, we will expect to see transformations in other interrelated and
affected stakeholders. This might include increased pervasiveness and influence of
ethically-sensitive consumers, innovative strategic thinking on the part of NGOs,
employees becoming a stronger CSR participant, increasing investor support for CSR, and CSR and the
amplified activity up, down and across the global supply chain. COVID-19
Recently, Strandberg quoted a Canadian study of businesses that revealed that many of
them now see themselves as post-CSR and becoming more “purpose-directed.” This could be
pandemic
perceived as one stage beyond “Deep CSR.” Their notion of purpose-directedness is that they
would no longer be profit-focused but social-purpose focused (Strandberg, 2020). In this
position on the CSR continuum, these companies would be adopting a social purpose as their
societal reason for the company existing. This sounds much like the already existing benefit 327
corporations, or B-corps, and only time will tell whether this transformation is just another
idealistic notion or becomes an organizational reality. A pertinent observation is that early
CSR-adopters over the past decades argued the same but managements failed to make that
transition. The next challenge, in dealing with this issue, is whether these leading CSR firms
can adopt strategies towards COVID-19 that will make dealing with this latest crisis central to
their CSR or purpose initiatives.
Though I am often riddled with skepticism about businesses’ latest claims to “do better,”
I do believe the authentic CSR Exemplar firms (Carroll et al., 2018) that have tended to go
beyond the typical and established patterns in terms of social responsibility excellence will
succeed in making COVID-19 responses their centerpiece for the foreseeable future and that
the mainstream adopters of CSR will likely follow. In short, a wonderful opportunity for
companies and management to transform their CSR performance and impacts upward will
prevail for the next several years.
In closing, I would like to offer a few thoughts about the implications of the COVID-19
pandemic for academics. Most reports confirm that colleges and universities have been
significantly affected by the pandemic. Most instructors today have responsibilities and
expectations in terms of their teaching, research, and service. By most accounts, teaching
approaches have been altered to creatively accommodate more online learning opportunities
though some teaching is still being done in person. Studies have not yet documented clearly how
student learning has been affected, but anecdotal reports have not been positive. Uncertainty
seems to rule the day and academics are focused on balancing health risks with educational
needs. Many instructors have already taken steps to more sensitively teach and evaluate their
students. The opportunities for research and service in light of the pandemic are limitless. It is
apparent even as I write that pandemic-related topics are being framed for future researchers to
pursue in papers, articles, symposia and other outlets. The opportunities for interdisciplinary
research projects are apparent. I strongly encourage these endeavors. Whether they be framed
as crisis management or strategic and operational implications for ongoing organizations, the
scope of possible research is wide and deep. I expect that these topics will begin appearing soon
and will have a lasting effect on scholarship. In the realm of service, both professional and
community challenges are presented, and I would enthusiastically encourage academics,
especially those in the CSR, business ethics, and social-issues-in-management realms, to identify
and carve out niches where they might further advance society’s understanding and progress
regarding the impact and implications of events such as pandemics. The world was not prepared
for COVID-19. Maybe we can better be prepared for the next crisis.

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Corresponding author
Archie B. Carroll can be contacted at: acarroll@uga.edu
330

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