Corporate Risk in Extreme Situations: Revolution, Epidemic and War

Abstract

The aim of the article is to identify the impact of extreme situations on enterprise operation and risks. Participant observation and case study methods were used. The article is based on the experience and observations gathered by one of the authors while working in the United Arab Emirates during the Arab Spring, in Ukraine during the Maidan and the annexation of Crimea, and in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic and the first two years of the Russian – Ukrainian war. Extreme crisis situations that occurred in real life are presented. One of the authors knew them from her own experience and from the experience of the companies she worked with. Based on specific situations, the article presents
Unless stated otherwise, all the materials are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Some rights reserved to SGH Warsaw School of Economics. the way in which an extreme crisis situation creates new, previously unknown types of corporate risk or aggravates individual, pre-existing risks, reinforcing them, giving a new dimension to a risk or even transforming one type of risk into another. It also indicates how the priorities of a risk manager and decision-maker change in extreme conditions and how their work changes. The article posits that various risk types (reputational, regulatory, business continuity, partnership, tax and other risks) turn into financial risk in an emergency situation. The most salient conclusions and lessons that one of the authors has gleaned from several years of work in countries affected by various types of extreme crisis situations, that is, based on participatory observations, are also presented.