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The purpose of this introduction is fourfold: (1) to articulate the reasons for the special issue; (2) to highlight some of the fundamental issues related to the management research on COVID-19; (3) to introduce the authors and to summarize their contributions to this special issue; and (4) to provide some suggestions for future research pertaining to global challenges and business in general.

This article introduces the special issue by addressing the following four points related to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) conceptualization of the crisis, (2) the role of organizations, (3) challenges of the global pandemic and (4) business–society relationships. We briefly relate the papers in this special issue to these four points and we conclude with some thoughts on how to move forward on research in this domain.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be one of the most important challenges to mankind and to organizations in recent years, and many organizations have proven to be very resilient in the face of this. Effective leadership, communication with stakeholders, global organizations and new organizational forms such as cross-sectoral collaborations have all proven important in dealing with this crisis. They will also likely be important for dealing with even more serious crises in the future such as climate change and other challenges referred to in the papers in this issue.

This paper provides an overview and summary of the implications of the papers in this special issue. As such, its originality derives mostly from the originality of the papers contained in this special issue.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the similarities and differences between Total Quality Management (TQM) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Moreover, the paper considers the implications of these similarities and differences for the future development of TQM and CSR.

This paper is a structured discourse analysis which is used to systematically explore these two discursive subjects. Both concepts encompass discursive ideas and practices.

The findings in the paper suggest that the two concepts share similar philosophical roots, that there is a substantial overlap between the elements of the two concepts, and that the ultimate expected outcome shows significant similarities. Despite these similarities, however, implementation of TQM will not necessarily result in CSR.

In this paper the findings lead to the conclusion that it is important to recognise the specific needs of CSR and include them as an implicit part of TQM. This conclusion has an important practical and descriptive theoretical implication and the extent to which CSR is diffused as a part of TQM depends on it.

The paper highlights the need for the development of a descriptive theory, that is to say, the identification of the mechanism(s) through which elements of CSR could be developed and implemented alongside that of TQM.

The paper sees that the question of the intersection between CSR and TQM has attracted the interest of other researchers. The majority of the previous work is normative. The contribution to this developing literature is made by adopting a systematic discursive approach using philosophy, elements of TQM/CSR process and outcomes as the framework for the analysis.

The environment continues to command serious attention as a key consideration in the corporate strategy process, both within the specialised environmental management literature and increasingly from the general management literature (Avila and Whitehead 1993, Porter and van der Linde 1993, Shrivastava 1992). One important area of academic examination is that of corporate environmental behaviour.

Employee representatives′ perceptions of job evaluation are explored and the impact of job evaluation on the collective bargaining procedure, pay differentials, motivation and performance is considered. In conclusion, an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of job evaluation is given.

The information presented in this article was collected as part of a national survey concerned with the extent and nature of job evaluation schemes in operation in Great Britain, sponsored by the Department of Employment. The full results of that study have been published elsewhere.

The aim of this article is to identify some of the factors that contribute to the implementation of “unbiased” job evaluation schemes. The data used for the present analysis were collected as part of a major survey concerned with the extent and nature of job evaluation schemes in operation in the United Kingdom, sponsored by the Department of Employment. We focus particularly on the unbiasedness of pay between female and male workers.

As one small part of a research project funded by the Science Research Council we have been working recently inside several British factories in an attempt to isolate the mechanisms of corporate productivity. Our ultimate objective is to derive robust measures of productivity in terms of batch manufacturing characteristics (e.g. product mix, throughput time, etc). But how does one measure productivity? It sounds simple until the range of possibilities is considered. After considering the range we eventually opted for “total productivity” measurement and this short article describes how we went about it. We applied this approach, for example, to a single, large machine shop in a heavy manufacturing firm; to the comparison of performance of several subsidiary firms within a group specialising in large batch production of high precision units; and to the overall performance of a firm in small batch production of technically complex units for military use.

The concept of added value has recently re‐emerged after many years of neglect and is currently recognised by many businessmen and consultants as making a valuable contribution to the debate on the problem of low productivity in Britain.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between business‐level strategy and organisational performance and to test the applicability of Porter's generic strategies in explaining differences in the performance of organisations.

The study was focussed on manufacturing firms in the UK belonging to the electrical and mechanical engineering sectors. Data were collected through a postal survey using the survey instrument from 124 organisations and the respondents were all at CEO level. Both objective and subjective measures were used to assess performance. Non‐response bias was assessed statistically and it was not found to be a major problem affecting this study. Appropriate measures were taken to ensure that common method variance (CMV) does not affect the results of this study. Statistical tests indicated that CMV problem does not affect the results of this study.

The results of this study indicate that firms adopting one of the strategies, namely cost‐leadership or differentiation, perform better than “stuck‐in‐the‐middle” firms which do not have a dominant strategic orientation. The integrated strategy group has lower performance compared with cost‐leaders and differentiators in terms of financial performance measures. This provides support for Porter's view that combination strategies are unlikely to be effective in organisations. However, the cost‐leadership and differentiation strategies were not strongly correlated with the financial performance measures indicating the limitations of Porter's generic strategies in explaining performance heterogeneity in organisations.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying some of the gaps in the literature through a systematic literature review and addressing those gaps.