Why the Covid-19 Crisis Is an Ethical Issue for Business
Evidence from the Australian JobKeeper Initiative
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21465233 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Graciela Corral de Zubielqui (0000-0001-6653-0299, The University of Adelaide, corresponding author), Howard Harris (0000-0002-5654-0968, University of South Australia) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 190 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 123-136 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Business Ethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0167-4544 • E-ISSN: 1573-0697 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10551-023-05392-2 |
| PMID | 37359805 |
| OpenAlex | W4360856039 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 45 |
The COVID-19 virus was unveiled to the world as a health crisis and later also as an economic crisis. For some organisations, it has become an ethical crisis. This is certainly the case for large organisations in Australia, where the way many enterprises handled a government wage subsidy called JobKeeper led to a public backlash, media pressure, and a variety of responses ranging from ‘We acted legally’ to the full return of the subsidy. Some organisations later reported profits, and the public response indicated concern about this behaviour, many considering it immoral despite it being legally compliant. It is, we contend, a question to which stakeholder theory can be applied, examining how organisations view and respond to the public. We use content analysis of mainstream media to provide information about public reactions and information from official sources to confirm corporate action. We show that there is a significant ethical component in the public response to the behaviour of organisations as they respond to the crisis. COVID has been an ethical, health, and financial crisis for these organisations. Public pressure, exerted in and through the media, made the general public a definite stakeholder
Business · Business ethics · Crisis communication · Economics · Financial crisis · Mainstream · Political science · Public relations · Stakeholder · Subsidy · Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting · COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts · Law · Management and Organizational Studies
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
The pyramid of corporate social responsibility
Effects of Covid-19 on business and research
Instrumental Stakeholder Theory
Ethical Decision Making by Individuals in Organizations
Crises and Crisis Management
Grounded Theory and Theoretical Coding
Stakeholder Theory
Behavioral Ethics in Organizations
Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic response
Organizational Response to Adversity
Social media and innovation
The emotional dog and its rational tail
Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience
Case Study Research
Towards a Methodology for Developing Evidence‐Informed Management Knowledge by Means of Systematic Review
Reciprocity in Firm–Stakeholder Dialog
Stakeholder Integration
Secondary Analysis and the Relationship between Official and Academic Social Research
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |