COVID-19 Pandemic and Stakeholder-Oriented Corporate Governance in Sustainable Corporations

Dear Colleagues,

It has been over three years since the world experienced the COVID-19 crisis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been enormous and unpredictable for the sustainability of corporations worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered an unprecedented opportunity to research how various national corporate governance mechanisms affect firms’ decision-making (Zattoni and Pugliese, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic had multiple effects, such as mobility restrictions and lockdowns, vaccine injections, and firm or governmental-level ‘responses’ to the crisis. In fact, mobility restrictions post the incident of a large number of COVID-19 cases in “Princess Diamond” once it docked in Japan, and subsequent border control harmed the stock market in the Japanese shipping industry (Sakawa and Watanabel, 2023). Under the transition era of corporate governance in stakeholder-oriented corporate governance, there might be a significant research question of how shareholder activism has affected corporate actions during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yoshikawa and Chua, 2020). Thus, it is crucial to reveal how the feature of national-level corporate governance is helpful in solving any agency problem and can contribute to sustainable corporations under the threat of pandemics.

In this sense, there might be a significant research question of how ownership structure or board composition has affected corporate actions or stock market returns during the worldwide pandemic era. In addition, how these corporate governance mechanisms have also affected ESG investment or CSR activities should also be considered. In this Special Issue, we welcome papers that intend to reveal how different national-level corporate governance mechanisms have affected corporate actions and stock market responses during the worldwide pandemic era. Thus, this Special Issue will focus on empirical and case studies which attempt to reveal the role of stakeholder-oriented corporate governance mechanisms.

References

1. Sakawa, H.; Watanabel, N. The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Japanese shipping industry: An event study approach. Transp. Policy 2023, 130, 130–140.
2. Yoshikawa, T.; Chua, G. COVID‑19 and Japanese shareholder activism: Brief respite for Japan’s self‑healing concrete. Asian Bus. Manag. 2020, 19, 302–305.
3. Zattoni, A.; Pugliese, A. Corporate governance research in the wake of a systemic crisis: Lessons and opportunities from the COVID-19 pandemic. J. Manag. Stud. 2021, 58, 1405–1410.

Dr. Hideaki Sakawa
Guest Editor

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• COVID-19
• corporate governance
• national level corporate governance
• sustainable corporations
• ownership structure
• board composition