We examine how firms respond to the Covid-19 pandemic by adjusting their management controls and what the consequences are in terms of firms’ resilience to the crisis. We review literature that deals with the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on business and investigate results from a survey conducted within a large international multi-divisional service firm and the German Business Panel. We find evidence consistent with the claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is associated with a shock to transparency and increased incentive problems. We document firms’ adjustments of their management controls in response to the Covid-19 crisis: Action controls are stronger, result controls are more flexible, and cultural controls are weaker. Regarding firms’ resilience, we provide supportive evidence that more resilient firms face a smaller shock to transparency, adjust their management controls to a smaller extent, and are associated with stronger cultural controls in terms of higher organisational trust.

我们研究了企业如何通过调整管理控制来应对 Covid-19 大流行，以及这对企业应对危机的弹性有何影响。我们回顾了有关 Covid-19 大流行对商业影响的文献，并对一家大型国际多部门服务公司和德国商业委员会进行的一项调查结果进行了调查。我们发现的证据与 Covid-19 大流行与透明度冲击和激励问题增加有关的说法一致。我们记录了企业为应对 Covid-19 危机而对其管理控制进行的调整：行动控制更强，结果控制更灵活，文化控制更弱。关于公司的复原力，我们提供了支持性证据，表明复原力更强的公司面临的透明度冲击较小，