Is any facet of the economy that was not adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic? The business world encountered a dramatic change after the lockdown, and travel bans were declared in most nations worldwide. Most businesses temporarily shut down before working at home was discovered, which birthed all other technological advancements like virtual meetings and online marketing. The new changes transformed organizational culture, structure, and systems into different and almost opposite ones. Most organizations had never encountered those changes, yet there was no resistance since it was a matter of ‘survival for the fittest.’ Therefore, the impact of the COVID pandemic transformed the organizational structure, culture, and systems to incline technological advancements.

Change of Organizational structure

The coronavirus pandemic necessitated long-term and short-term organizational modifications that were not present during the pre-pandemic era. The jolts resulted from different reactions from individuals and the government to contain the health threat like the lockdown and the social distancing. The on-site work was replaced by remote working for numerous employees, which required more delegation of duties than before. Virtual meetings replaced the physical meetings through Zoom, which had not penetrated the market by the end of 2019, empowering the techno- structure model (Spicer, 2020). The impact of coronavirus brought about a new economic design where payment of salaries was based on performance, unlike the previous one where salaries were predetermined even before a performance where independent contractors like freelancers replaced employees. Resultantly, the issue of reward and ownership drastically changed due to the demands of organizational shift necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The short-term effect of the pandemic on the organizational structure was physical changes alongside the techno-structure model.

Secondly, the pandemic brought new long-term organizational structure changes, which were different from the pre-pandemic structures. It led to minimized international labor mobility due to demands laid by immigration and emigration from one nation to another. Several features of the business landscape changed after the emergency of the coronavirus even after everything went to ‘normal’ after the discovery of the vaccines since there was no asymmetry in organizational structures before and after the pandemic. There was a permanent mark left in areas of economic fundamentals: technologies, preferences, and scarcities ( Triemstra et al., 2021). It brought new work organizations with technology at its peak to facilitate the new reforms like the time of the Great Depression, whereby technology played an integral role in changes in the organizational structures. Hence, the long-term impact of the COVID pandemic on organizational design is a change in work organization, work independencies, and technological advancement to support the new changes.

Change of Organizational Culture

COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized organizational culture across the globe, whereby the jolts have brought positive and negative effects. According to Bragatto et al. (2021), some cultural traits have been over-emphasized, like flexibility, accountability, supportiveness, and confronting challenges, whereas others were downplayed, like individualism and customer and work orientation. Consequently, there was a shift of focus of the leadership from organizational culture to more pressing questions like how to navigate amid the prevailing economic drawbacks. The global lockdown was an eye-opener to new opportunities of working from home and not necessarily on the business premises. People had to adjust and learn to work from home at their own pace, which demanded high discipline since there was no supervision. The business people and employees realize they can be connected in different geographical locations virtually through online platforms, and the impact is almost the same.

In contrast, organizational culture amid the coronavirus pandemic changed for the worst due to the rate at which the changes happened. There was no time for peaceful transition and transference of the good norms. Naturally, culture is developed slowly by incorporating norms that govern a setting instead of the dramatic changes witnessed during the coronavirus era. Organizations witnessed company norms and culture scrapped away to accommodate new norms, creating compatibility challenges and negatively impacting the organizations. For instance, the face-to-face formal way of doing business was replaced by the new sophisticated video conferencing technology (Foss, 2020). While working remotely seems convenient and cost-effective, it has several disadvantages of deteriorating mental health, which is rising