Responsible Communication of Romanian Companies for Ensuring Public Health in a COVID-19 Pandemic Context

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to respond to the threat of this risk and innovate in corporate governance. In order to reduce the risk of illness, one of the most applied measures by all companies was social distancing, but to avoid human interaction, companies had to adapt their communication strategies. The objective of the paper is to assess the risk management of Romanian-listed companies associated with COVID-19 focusing on their business communication with shareholders and stakeholders. To emphasis the communication we have chosen to analyze all public reports during the state of emergency of the companies listed on the main market at the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The empirical analysis consists of a panel data econometric model using maximum likelihood random-effects regression and a logistical regression to highlight the correlations between the dependent variables Public Reports and Business Continuity Plan and the analyzed independent variables. The study showed that in most cases, the companies had at least one public report, especially the one related to the annual shareholders meeting, a percentage of 21% of companies had two public reports, and only 17% of companies have published three or more reports. The companies that communicated the most were the ones belonging to the premium trading category, and the number of published reports was influenced by the communication evaluation indicator, profitability and by the announcement of the donations made.