Pandemic lessons for management: COVID-19 could lead to high-performance work systems and a healthier employer-worker relationship

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic led to a variety of containment measures, such as "social distancing," "work from home," and even degrees of "lockdown" at workplaces all over the world. These all affected the world of work and necessitated a range of supports for individual workers (in the form of furloughs, for example) and businesses (in the form of grants). Some businesses still failed. Others succeeded because they were strategically resilient - a complex mindset that is valuable, rare, and imperfectly imitable by competitors.