Journal article
The Role of Corporate Culture in Bad Times: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
The journal of financial and quantitative analysis, Vol.56(7), pp.2545-2583
06/14/2021
DOI: 10.1017/S0022109021000326
Abstract
After fitting a topic model to 40,927 COVID-19–related paragraphs in 3,581 earnings calls over the period Jan. 22–Apr. 30, 2020, we obtain firm-level measures of exposure and response related to COVID-19 for 2,894 U.S. firms. We show that despite the large negative impact of COVID-19 on their operations, firms with a strong corporate culture outperform their peers without a strong culture. Moreover, these firms are more likely to support their community, embrace digital transformation, and develop new products than those peers. We conclude that corporate culture is an intangible asset designed to meet unforeseen contingencies as they arise.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Role of Corporate Culture in Bad Times: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Creators
- Kai Li - University of British ColumbiaXing Liu - University of British ColumbiaFeng Mai - University of Iowa, Business AnalyticsTengfei Zhang - Louisiana State University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The journal of financial and quantitative analysis, Vol.56(7), pp.2545-2583
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- DOI
- 10.1017/S0022109021000326
- ISSN
- 0022-1090
- eISSN
- 1756-6916
- Grant note
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: 435-2018-0037
We thank the special issue editors Ran Duchin and Jarrad Harford; Elroy Dimson, Kevin Gao, Jason Gong, Mark Grinblatt, Qiang Kang, Oguzhan Karakas, Jon Karpoff, Bart Lambrecht, Raghu Rau, Qinzheng Xu, and Chendi Zhang; conference participants at the First Annual Canadian Sustainable Finance Network (CSFN) Conference; and seminar participants at Central University of Finance and Economics, Florida International University, Microsoft Research NYC, University of Cambridge, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA) COVID-19 Symposium, and the Corporate Finance Workshop for their helpful comments. We acknowledge financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant 435-2018-0037) and the Sauder Exploratory Research Grants Program. All errors are our own.
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/14/2021
- Academic Unit
- Business Analytics
- Record Identifier
- 9984703459702771
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