Business response to COVID-19 impact: Effectiveness analysis in South Africa

Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Business response to COVID-19 impact: Effectiveness analysis in South Africa
 
Creator Anakpo, Godfred Mishi, Syden
 
Subject Business management business response; COVID-19 impact; outbreak; effectiveness analysis; South Africa.
Description Background: Following the outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many businesses have put out measures to counter the impact of the outbreak and its related reactions from economic actors (individuals, authorities and other businesses) on their business operations. However, nearly no empirical studies or reports have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of those measures.Aim: This study aimed at examining the effectiveness of business response measures to COVID-19 impact on business outcome.Setting: This study focused on businesses that are value-added tax (VAT) registered.Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was used. The authors applied logistic regression technique to analyse the effectiveness of business response measures on business outcome.Results: The authors found evidence that business responses such as virtual connection, innovative e-commerce and increasing working hours are more effective business responses, whilst decreasing work hours, laying off workers temporarily and ordinary e-commerce are less effective measures against the impact of the outbreak. Furthermore, business characteristics such as industry type (e.g. ‘agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing’ and ‘electricity, gas and water supply’) are more resilient to COVID-19 shock, whilst pure export market and small businesses, secondary and tertiary, are significantly less resilient.Conclusions: Firstly, the study shows that some business responses are more effective in remediating the adverse impact of COVID-19 and therefore recommends policy intervention and industrial actions to promote them. Secondly, it is also recommended that financial bailout and/or Internet infrastructure and domestic support for small and export businesses could make them more resilient to the adverse impact of the outbreak.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number: 121890) and Nelson Mandela University through Vice Chancellor funds
Date 2021-05-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Survey
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajesbm.v13i1.397
 
Source The Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management; Vol 13, No 1 (2021); 7 pages 2071-3185 2522-7343
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/397/530 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/397/531 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/397/532 https://sajesbm.co.za/index.php/sajesbm/article/view/397/533
 
Coverage South Africa South Africa Business size
Rights Copyright (c) 2021 Godfred Anakpo, Syden Mishi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT