Corporate Resilience in Cancel Culture Times

Аннотация

Corporate resilience has emerged as a prominent focus in international studies, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that unfolded in 2019. This attention has been amplified by the structural shifts in the business models of Russian companies, prompted by imposed sanctions, thereby accentuating the need for comprehensive academic exploration of resilience, its driving forces, and adaptive turnaround strategies, especially in the era of cancel culture. Despite the heightened significance of resilience, the drivers underlying it during structural crises remain insufficiently studied. This paper addresses this gap by employing a combination of quantitative methods applied to a sample of publicly traded Russian companies spanning the years 2012 to 2022 (first half), alongside case studies. Our contribution to the literature is manifold. Firstly, our application of Altman’s Z-score model to publicly traded companies unveils the industries with the highest and lowest resilience across the Russian market from a historical perspective. Secondly, we assert that fluctuations in the degree of resilience during turbulent times, as captured by the Z-score, offer a more adequate evaluation compared to popular market-based metrics like total shareholder returns (TSR). Thirdly, our findings reveal that higher credit ratings and state ownership have no evident impact on the degree of resilience. Conversely, the professional background of CEOs is correlated with firm performance and plays a significant role in determining company resilience amid cancel culture challenges.