Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have been investigated by scholars from several points of view. Although the epidemic of COVID-19 is recent, numerous scholars have analyzed its effects on ESG, making it difficult to systematize current knowledge. This generates the risk that the discussion will become stale. This study aims to provide a systematic literature review able to examine the combination of ESG and COVID-19 outbreak, to understand what the academics discovered. Eighty-five studies were systematically reviewed. We used a systematic literature review which is the tool that can ensure that all relevant data from the topic under investigation are considered. This approach is considered as the most comprehensive and rigorous one because it allows the creation of the advancement of knowledge of the specific topic. We identified five classes plus a residual one that accommodate the main topics analyzed in the literature (investment and stock returns, ESG in specific industries, ESG rating, gender studies, ESG reporting, and other). Our research highlights that most of the studies have been focused on the first three topics, sometimes reaching different or opposite findings, while only few studies have been dedicated on the other topics. Therefore, we state the need for more research into the ESG/COVID-19 combination in the fields of gender diversity and ESG reporting, and for more research able to understand the different findings of the other three identified topics.

Investors are increasingly concerned with the sustainability of firms and their impact on global development, resulting in a rise in Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) that considers environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Integrating sustainability into company strategies can affect various aspects of an organization, including IPOs (initial public offerings). Given the growing importance of ESG information disclosure, this study wants to examine the potential effect of an ESG report disclosure on IPO performance, since there are not studies focused on analyzing how ESG factors and IPO performance are correlated. The purpose of this study is to examine how ESG disclosure affects IPO underpricing and increases transparency for stakeholders to reduce information asymmetry. This study explores the impact of disclosing ESG information on IPO underpricing using a sample of 100 European IPOs from 2017 to 2021, with 50 firms disclosing an ESG report prior to the IPO and 50 that did not. The results showed that the publication of a sustainable report before an IPO has a positive effect on underpricing by reducing it. This finding suggests that companies that publish sustainability reports are perceived to be less risky, and investors value ESG disclosure as a tool to reduce the risks associated with ESG issues. The work contributes to the research on firms’ incentives to disclose ESG information. Our study is limited by the size of the sample, which is limited and only focused on European companies; therefore, future studies should consider companies from other parts of the world, and with more data related to IPO performance.

This study aims to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance for European listed companies. The purpose of this study is to understand if and how the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak influenced the behavior of European companies in terms of best practices in ESG. In this paper, we consider the ESG score as a proxy of management practices. The ESG score was collected for all companies included in the STOXX 600 index (from the Refinitiv Eikon database) and analyzed using fixed and random effects. The sample is composed of 600 European listed companies and covers the period from 2018 to 2021. The results show that even in a health crisis with economic repercussions for the whole world, companies have continued to increase their commitment to ESG targets. The results are robust, also considering the different components of the ESG score (environment, social, governance) individually. This paper validates the significance for companies to improve their ESG performance even during unstable times. Our analysis has implications from several perspectives, adding supplementary information and considerations to the uncompleted debate examining the effects of external shocks on ESG performance.

Purpose: This study relies on the lessons learned from the recent pandemic crisis to propose a conceptual framework for organizational crisis management and illustrate its application in an organization that effectively protected its competitive position during the crisis.Design/methodology/approach: Building upon the resource-based view and the dynamic capability theoretical framework, we first conducted a systematic literature review that involves content and bibliographic analysis. Subsequently, we developed a conceptual crisis management framework and applied it to the case of Hyundai Motor Brazil.Findings: The systematic literature review found innovation and knowledge management as prominent response mechanisms to the pandemic crisis whereas the case provided a better understanding on how these mechanisms contributed to crisis navigation.Practical implications: Managers will find valuable insights into the importance of linking risk management and crisis management, and leveraging innovation and knowledge to enhance resilience, with straightforward operationalization for benchmark.Originality/value: This paper is original for relating enterprise risk management, innovation and knowledge management to each phase of existing crisis management processes. It enriches the theoretical and practical debate on the dynamic capabilities’ perspective of risk and crisis management.