ABSTRACT

This book addresses the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Central and East European countries and examines the effect the pandemic has had on organizations in the region. It focuses on the widely understood business environment, covering companies’ responses to the crisis, the role of institutions in stabilizing markets, and the reshaping of global business trends.

The book is a complex and multidimensional work that draws its roots from distinct yet simultaneously interlinked research areas. All of the chapters, whether they refer to macro-, meso-, or micro-perspectives, always highlight how crises – global and regional – change the global trends we have observed in business in the last 20 years. The book includes the most topical issues that delineate public discourse on firms’ resilience. In this way, it ‘connects the dots’ and uncovers the missing links necessary for any reader wishing to understand the specificity of contemporary companies’ responses to unexpected events such as pandemics or geopolitical crises. Further, it tackles questions such as what role institutions play in building the adaptive capacity of companies, how companies build their resilience capacity for 21st-century crises, and what the significance is of the uncertainty, the information asymmetry, and the bounded rationality concept on the company’s decision-making process.

The book will find a broad audience among academics and students across diverse fields of study, as well as practitioners and policymakers. It is a key reference for all those who want to better understand the complex nature of uncertainty, crisis management, and its implications, not only for CEE countries but, first and foremost, the business environment.

chapter 1|4 pages

Why do we never learn?

A history lesson on crisis management

chapter 2|11 pages

Nature of a crisis

How has it changed and affected the firms?

chapter 3|14 pages

Institutions as stability warrantors

Can institutions help safeguard companies from crises?

chapter 4|16 pages

Reflections on the challenges of future Eurozone expansion on the example of Poland

Avoiding the crisis with a common currency?

chapter 5|15 pages

How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the macroeconomic environment for doing business

A close look at the GDP fluctuations and public debt distress in CEE countries

chapter 6|14 pages

Trade openness and trade dependence

How did the COVID-19 pandemic reshape trade flows and trade policies in Central and Eastern European countries?

chapter 10|27 pages

Building and enacting organisational resilience

Firms' responses to the COVID-19 crisis