Under COVID-19 Pandemic Impact: Do Internal Mechanisms Play Fundamental Role in Corporations’ Outcomes

Abstract

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic has had a significant impact on health care, the economy, transportation, and other areas in several businesses and locations worldwide. As a result of the quarantine policy, population mobility fell drastically, resulting in diminished people’s spending power and ultimately a stagnating economy. The same is true in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where the government has imposed a severe countrywide lockdown and a nocturnal curfew since the commencement of the COVID-19 epidemic. All travel to and from the country was halted as the borders were closed. In addition, many local and national preventative and control efforts have been undertaken to contain the spread of COVID-19 throughout the country. The present work aims at estimating the impact of internal mechanisms on corporations’ outcomes under the COVID-19 pandemic. The current work uses statistical analysis via SPSS, a Statistical Software, to test the hypotheses based on data collection of 100 corporations belonging to industrial and service corporations from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s financial market for 2020. Regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses of the current work that are represented by board size, independent non-executive managers, and financial leverage of corporations, considering testing the control variable as well, representing the industrial type. Financial leverage is the dependent variable of the present study. The findings revealed that the greater number of independent non-executive managers, the big board size leads to a negative impact of financial leverage. The results showed that independent non-executive managers do not affect financial leverage. Furthermore, the findings admit that the industry type has no impact on financial leverage. The practical implication of the current work is helpful for different parties like academics and scholars in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan context. The present work adds contribution to the poor literature via introducing empirical evidence regarding the financial leverage as an indicator to the corporation’s outcomes – corporation performance and internal mechanisms relationship under the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.