A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting

Harymawan, Iman; Rahayu, Nadia Klarita Article A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Harymawan, Iman; Rahayu, Nadia Klarita (2022) : A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 9, Iss. 1, pp. 1-14, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/289225 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=oabm20 Cogent Business & Management ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/oabm20 A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting Iman Harymawan & Nadia Klarita Rahayu To cite this article: Iman Harymawan & Nadia Klarita Rahayu (2022) A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting, Cogent Business & Management, 9:1, 2116798, DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 © 2022 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Published online: 30 Aug 2022. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 3658 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles ACCOUNTING, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE & BUSINESS ETHICS | REVIEW ARTICLE A review of COVID-19 related research in accounting Iman Harymawan 1 * and Nadia Klarita Rahayu 1 Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review COVID-19 and Accounting research published during the pandemic up to February 2021. This study is a literature review that focuses on articles related to COVID-19 and accounting. This study uses articles sourced from the Scopus database. This study discusses COVID-19 in relation to the financial market, corporate social responsibility, firm performance, financial crisis, risk, and corporate governance. The results of this study are expected to help determine future research related to COVID-19 in the accounting field. Subjects: Business, Management and Accounting; Accounting; Corporate Governance Keywords: COVID-19; review; governance Classification codes: M40; M14; G34 1. Introduction The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was first reported in Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. World Health Organization has declared the world a global emergency related to this virus since January 2020. This incident is an extraordinary phenomenon that occurred on Earth in century −21, on a scale perhaps comparable to World War II because large-scale events (international sporting events, for example) were almost entirely postponed and even canceled. The pandemic has had a huge impact on actual economic activity. By the end of March 2020, more than 100 countries/regions around the world have implemented partial or full lockdowns. Compared with March 2019, air and inter-city travel in major world cities that affect billions of people has been reduced by 70% to 90% (Dunford et al., 2020). The national response to this disease has never been seen in previous occurrences. In this case, the government takes two-sided action. First, the government is taking emergency measures, including closing social quarantine areas and investing in testing and isolating suspicious cases, and treating confirmed cases to deal ABOUT THE AUTHORS Iman Harymawan is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. He obtained his PhD (2016) from City University of Hong Kong. His current research focuses include corporate governance issues, political and military connections in business, and financial reporting. Nadia Klarita Rahayu is a student at the Department of Accounting, Universitas Airlangga. PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT This paper review COVID-19 and Accounting research published during the pandemic up to February 2021. This study is a literature review that focuses on articles related to COVID-19 and accounting. This study uses articles sourced from the Scopus database. This study discusses COVID- 19 in relation to the financial market, corporate social responsibility, firm performance, financial crisis, risk, and corporate governance. The results of this study are expected to help determine future research related to COVID-19 in the accounting field. Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 1 of 14 Received: 14 July 2021 Accepted: 14 August 2022 *Corresponding author: Iman Harymawan, Department of Accounting, Faculty of Economic and Business, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia E-mail: [email protected]. ac.id Reviewing editor: David McMillan, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Additional information is available at the end of the article © 2022 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. with the disease. On the other side, some support and stimulus were also carried out by the government, from the Ministry of Finance to the Central Bank, to overcome economic damage. Currently, many accounting researchers are conducting research that is included in accelerated special editions or academic conferences related to COVID-19 as it spreads (Kells, 2020; Lapsley, 2020; Mather, 2020). Research related to COVID-19, especially in the accounting field, has increased (Aguinis et al., 2020; Ashraf, 2020; Broadstock et al., 2021; Hyndman, 2020; Izzeldin et al., 2021; Kraus et al., 2020; Lapsley, 2020; Shen et al., 2020). This makes it an opportune time to offer an initial assessment and indication of emerging themes and challenges, particularly in accounting research. This study provides a literature review of covid research in accounting. We discuss what areas are most challenging to investigate in the future. This research examines various studies and studies identified by a systematic process using electronic research. These various studies were obtained from international databases (SCOPUS) by searching for certain keywords. Based on a search on the SCOPUS website with the keywords “COVID-19”, “Pandemic”, “Coronavirus”, “Covid-19”, “Viral Disease”, “Covid-19 Pandemic”, and “Pandemics” and limiting them in the fields of Business, Management, and Accounting found 107,559 documents while in the field of Economics, Econometrics, and Finance there were 1,873 documents. Next, we determine the criteria for the selection of articles that we will use. Based on a systematic literature review in the accounting field related to the COVID-19 phenomenon, this study aims to systematize the academic debate and contribute to the future research agenda of accounting related to COVID-19. We hope that through these various studies, conclusions can be drawn regarding the development of research trends in the accounting sector regarding COVID-19. We also hope this research can make a practical contribution to the importance of good governance. We conducted a research search through Scopus for research from January 2020 to February 2021 to reveal the literature in COVID-19. The results provide a reference for current and future COVID-19 research worldwide. We hope this research will motivate accounting research related to covid in the future. First, a description of the related approaches and topics will help the researchers to familiarize themselves with research related to COVID-19 in accounting. Second, presenting a summary of the main findings of the COVID-19 research in accounting is an important step that is the main contribution of this research. Researchers in accounting and accountability have more opportunities to engage critically with new and emerging phenomena early. Researchers in accounting need to present interdisciplinary research and embrace the tailored theory to pursue social relevance to avoid the trap of contributing to a conversation that will only become an academic bubble (O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2014; Unerman & Chapman, 2014) Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a global public, business, and government issue, accounting researchers need to be more involved with policy and practice. Finally, this review provides guidance for future research questions to gain more understanding of the COVID-19 questions in accounting. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the materials, method, and previous research. Section 3 present regional distribution of the research. Section 4 present the discussion. Section 5 present the conclusion. 2. Materials, method and previous research 2.1. Systematic literature review We use the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to provide an overview of existing research topic knowledge and insights into its development (Khan et al., 2020; Khlif & Chalmers, 2015). According to Fink (2005, p. 3), SLR is a systematic, explicit, comprehensive, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers. SLR provides a summary and understanding of the development of Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 2 of 14 a topic gap (Khan et al., 2020) by gathering evidence from the most relevant data (Rafi-Ul-Shan et al., 2018). 2.2. Database selection This research examines a variety of research and studies identified by a systematic process that combines electronic research. These various studies were obtained from international databases (Scopus) and libraries by searching for certain keywords. After collecting previous research related to these keywords, an analysis will then be carried out to draw conclusions about the development of research trends regarding COVID-19. The sources of literature used in this review were Scopus, and studies published between January 2020 and February 2021 were retrieved. 2.3. Selection criteria We did a search with the keywords “COVID-19”, “Pandemic”, “Coronavirus”, “Covid-19”, “Viral Disease”, “Covid-19 Pandemic”, and “Pandemics” then limit them to the areas of Business, Management, and Accounting and Economics, Econometrics, and Finance. From these two areas, 107,559 documents were found in the fields of Business, Management, and Accounting and 1,873 documents in the fields of Economics, Econometrics, and Finance. We filtered several keywords: crisis management, corporate social responsibility, risk assessment, sustainability, management, risk management, governance, and organization management. After obtaining several documents, we selected several documents that were closely related to governance and corporate social responsibility issues. This is because not all of the documents presented are in accordance with the scope of the research. Table 1 below shows a list of articles that we will discuss in this study. 3. Regional distribution COVID-19 has spread around the world without exception. COVID-19 is a global threat to all parties. The impact of COVID-19 is very diverse and not the same for all countries and all socioeconomic groups (Hörisch, 2021). The following is the distribution of countries used as the basis for the research conducted by previous studies. Most of the research was conducted based on global data such as Aguinis et al. (2020), Ali et al. (2020), and Ashraf (2020), while only a few use country-specific data (Broadstock et al., 2021; Hyndman, 2020; Izzeldin et al., 2021; Kraus et al., 2020; Lapsley, 2020; Shen et al., 2020). Based on these data, further research can still be developed with an assessment in certain countries. Not only that, the opportunity to be more open to specific countries or developing countries is still very wide open. This is because every country has conditions and ways in dealing with COVID-19 so that the resulting impacts are also different from one another. We present a summary of country list in Table 2. 4. Discussion 4.1. COVID-19 and financial market We present a summary of research related to the financial markets and COVID-19 in Table 3. COVID-19 is closely related to the financial market. Zhang et al. (2020) provide an overview of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock market risks. Significant challenges have emerged after the presence of this virus in various countries around the world. Finally, there was a large-scale movement in the financial markets in response to this event. The results of this study indicate that global financial market risks have increased substantially in response to the pandemic. In addition, individual stock market reactions are also affected by the spread of the COVID- Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 3 of 14 Table 1. COVID-19 related research list No Tittle Author Journal 1 Understanding employee responses to COVID-19: a behavioral corporate social responsibility perspective Herman Aguinis, Isabel Villamor and Kelly P. Gabriel Management Research: Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management Vol. 18 No. 4, 2020 pp. 421– 438 2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)—An epidemic or pandemic for financial markets Mohsin Ali, Nafis Alam, Syed Aun R. Rizvi. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance 27 3 Stock markets’ reaction to COVID-19: cases or fatalities? Badar Nadeem Ashraf Research in International Business and Finance 4 The role of ESG performance during times of financial crisis: Evidence from COVID-19 in China David C. Broadstock, Kalok Chan, Louis T.W. Cheng, Xiaowei Wang Finance Research Letters 5 COVID-19 risk governance: drivers, responses and lessons to be learned Aengus Collins, Marie- Valentine Florin & Ortwin Renn Journal of Risk Research 6 COVID-19 and the future of CSR research Andrew Crane & Dirk Matten Journal of Management Studies 7 The Impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on the Market Price of Risk Manthos D. Delis, Christos S. Savva, Panayiotis Theodossiou, Journal of Financial Stability 8 After Covid-19. Reorientation Of Crisis Management In Crisis Zbyslaw Dobrowolski Entrepreneurship And Sustainability Issues 9 Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world Sarah Dryhurst, Claudia R. Schneider, John Kerr, Alexandra L. J. Freeman, Gabriel Recchia, Anne Marthe van der Bles, David Spiegelhalter & Sander van der Linden Journal of Risk Research 10 Trust and stock market volatility during the COVID-19 crisis Nils Engelhardt, Miguel Krause, Daniel Neukirchen, Peter N. Posch Finance Research Letters 11 The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing Philosophy Hongwei He, Lloyd Harri Journal of Business Research 12 The relation of COVID-19 to the UN sustainable development goals: implications for sustainability accounting, management and policy research Jacob Hörisch Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal 13 UK charities and the pandemic: navigating the perfect storm Noel Hyndman Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change 14 The impact of Covid-19 on G7 stock markets volatility: Evidence from a ST-HAR model Marwan Izzeldin, Gulnur Muradoglu, Vasileios Pappas, Sheeja Sivaprasad International Review of Financial Analysis 15 Can we learn lessons from the past? COVID-19 crisis and corporate governance responses Khalil Jebran, Shihua Chen Int J Fin Econ. (Continued) Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 4 of 14 19 outbreak in every country. This pandemic causes enormous uncertainty and economic losses resulting in market instability and difficult prediction rates. Ashraf (2020) used daily data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths as well as stock market returns from 64 countries during the period 22 January 2020 to 17 April 2020. From his analysis, it was found that the stock market responded negatively to the growth of confirmed cases of COVID- 19. Overall, our results show that the stock market is rapidly responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this response varies over time depending on the stage of the outbreak. We summarized research related to COVID-19 and financial market in Table 3. The business sector is affected by different intensities and times (Izzeldin et al., 2021). For example, the sectors most affected are the Health Care and Consumer sectors as a result of the Covid-19 drug race. In addition, airlines are also one of the sectors with a terrible impact. Furthermore, this emerging technology sector has recently been impacted both at its latest and worst, as the lockdown measures put in place force people to explore a wide variety of web-based entertainment and distraction options. Furthermore, based on global data, Ali et al. (2020) in two ranges (Dec 2019 to 10 March 2020) and (-post-10 March 2020) found that the epicenter that was previously in China had stabilized while the market global has been in freefall especially in the next phase of deployment. Not only that, commodities that are relatively safer to suffer due to the pandemic are moving to the US. The global market during a pandemic is influenced by various factors, one of which is the belief in COVID-19. Engelhardt et al., 2021) analyzed whether the confidence level affects the volatility of No Tittle Author Journal 16 Impacts of COVID-19 on corporate governance and assurance, international finance and economics, and non-fiction book publishing: some personal reflections Stuart Kells Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change 17 The economics of COVID-19: initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis Sascha Kraus, Thomas Clauss, Matthias Breier, Johanna Gast, Alessandro Zardini, Victor Tiberius International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 18 An uncertain, erratic story: the pandemic in the UK Irvine Lapsley Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change 19 Leadership and governance in a crisis: some reflections on COVID-19 Paul Mather Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change 20 Can corporate social responsibility protect firm value during the COVID-19 pandemic? Shangzhi (Charles) Qiu, Jianing Jiang, Xinming Liu, Ming-Hsiang Chen, Xina Yuan International Journal of Hospitality Management 21 COVID-19ʹs disasters are perilous than Global Financial Crisis: A rumor or fact? Khurram Shehzad, Liu Xiaoxing, Hayfa Kazouz Finance Research Letters 22 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Firm Performance Huayu Shen, Mengyao Fu, Hongyu Pan, Zhongfu Yu & Yongquan Chen Emerging Markets Finance And Trade 23 Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19 Dayong Zhanga, Min Hua, Qiang Ji Finance Research Letters Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 5 of 14 Table 2. Country list No Title Country 1 Understanding employee responses to COVID-19: a behavioral corporate social responsibility perspective Global 2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)—An epidemic or pandemic for financial markets Global 3 Stock markets’ reaction to COVID-19: cases or fatalities? Global 4 The role of ESG performance during times of financial crisis: Evidence from COVID-19 in China China 5 COVID-19 risk governance: drivers, responses and lessons to be learned Global 6 COVID-19 and the future of CSR research Global 7 The Impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on the Market Price of Risk Global 8 After Covid-19. Reorientation Of Crisis Management In Crisis Global 9 Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world Global 10 Trust and stock market volatility during the COVID-19 crisis Global 11 The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing Philosophy Global 12 The relation of COVID-19 to the UN sustainable development goals: implications for sustainability accounting, management and policy research Global 13 UK charities and the pandemic: navigating the perfect storm United Kingdom 14 The impact of Covid-19 on G7 stock markets volatility: Evidence from a ST-HAR model G7 countries 15 Can we learn lessons from the past? COVID-19 crisis and corporate governance responses Global 16 Impacts of COVID-19 on corporate governance and assurance, international finance and economics, and non-fiction book publishing: some personal reflections Global 17 The economics of COVID-19: initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis Western European countries 18 An uncertain, erratic story: the pandemic in the U United Kingdom 19 Leadership and governance in a crisis: some reflections on COVID-19 Global 20 Can corporate social responsibility protect firm value during the COVID-19 pandemic? China 21 COVID-19ʹs disasters are perilous than Global Financial Crisis: A rumor or fact? 22 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Firm Performance China 23 Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19 Global Harymawan & Rahayu, Cogent Business & Management (2022), 9: 2116798 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2116798 Page 6 of 14 global stock markets, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stock market volatility is significantly lower in countries with a high confidence level. This is obtained by analyzing 47 stock markets. From the results of this analysis, it was found that trust in fellow citizens and the state government is an important aspect. 4.2. COVID-19 and corporate social responsibility Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has experienced rapid development. This started before the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. Research in the field of CSR can also be said to be the most widely read sub-field of research. In addition, with this pandemic, CSR practices are experiencing their own challenges as research has previously been conducted (Aguinis et al., 2020; Crane & Matten, 2020). We summarized research related to COVID-19 and Corporate Social Responsibility in Table 4. Using conceptual and empirical research, Aguinis et al. (2020) synthesized CSR behavior critically. In his study, they explained the use of CSR, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. CSR policies in dealing with COVID-19 are made by the organization but are implemented by each employee. The success of CSR implementation depends on how employees perceive and react to CSR actions that have been created. CSR can be embedded inside or outside the company’s core function. Furthermore, the positive effects of CSR will be obtained if its implementation is carried out with employees. According to He and Harris (2020), companies have an excellent opportunity to be involved in CSR activities during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. They can be a potential for CSR development in the long term. On the consumer side, the tendency to consume more responsibly is also an important decision during a pandemic. Marketers must utilize this fundamental change in people’s lives intelligently through appropriate policies and strategies. Crane and Matten (2020) then summarizes research in the field of CSR in relation to COVID-19. Collins et al. (2020) analyze the key areas where CSR research addresses stakeholder challenges of Table 3. COVID-19 and financial market No Tittle Result 1 Coronavirus (COVID-19)—An epidemic or pandemic for financial markets (Ali et al., 2020) The emergence of the Coronavirus has caused uncertainty and high volatility in financial markets. This starts from the center of the Coronavirus, China, to the global market. 2 Stock markets’ reaction to COVID-19: cases or fatalities? (Ashraf, 2020) The stock market responded negatively to the increase in confirmed cases of COVID- 19. Furthermore, this response was found to be stronger in the number of confirmed cases than in the number of deaths. 3 Trust and stock market volatility during the COVID-19 crisis (Engelhardt et al., 2021) Stock market volatility is lower in highconfidence countries (in reaction to the announcement of COVID-19 cases). 4 The impact of Covid-19 on G7 stock markets volatility: Evidence from a ST-HAR model (Izzeldin et al., 2021) The crisis during COVID-19 occurred in all countries and all sectors with different intensities and times. Furthermore, the financial market’s response to COVID-19 resembled the financial crisis’s response compared to the previous pandemic crisis. 5 Financial markets under the global pandemic of COVID-19 (Zhang et al., 2020) Global financial market risks have increased in line with the COVID-19 pandemic. This causes the market to be highly volatile and unpredictable. 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