Look to the past: How ENC businesses might recover from COVID-19

Laura Madden teaches a class in the College of Business. (ECU Photo by Rhett Butler)

How small businesses responded to a catastrophe from 10 years ago could shed light on how today’s entrepreneurs will address the challenge resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a study titled “Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition in the face of disasters,” ECU management professor and study author Dr. Laura Madden and her colleagues, Dr. Furkan Gur of Northern Illinois University, Dr. Josh Bendickson of University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Dr. William McDowell of Bradley University, looked at the Gulf Coast Oil Spill from 2010 and the pattern of organizational responses and regional recovery over the two years following the spill.

Madden and her co-authors did a deep dive of almost 200 disaster-related articles published during and after the oil spill. What emerged were themes that captured how the Gulf Coast-area businesses responded to the disaster.

“Our paper examines media accounts following the initial event April 20 (2010),” said Madden. “We found patterns in the way people and businesses, specifically, were responding to that tragedy of the oil spill, and you can see those behaviors represented…or echoed in the COVID-19 tragedy and response.”

In a recent interview on the Talk Like a Pirate podcast, Madden breaks down those themes into three categories: psychological states, recovery efforts and emerging opportunities. It’s the latter category that some eastern North Carolina and Greenville-area businesses are already starting to address, which is why Dr. Madden is reassured about the recovery process.

“We’re following a similar script in terms of our COVID-19 reactions compared to the oil spill,” said Madden. “During the oil spill, Gulf Coast hotels pivoted in the absence of tourists to offer discount pricing to the many volunteers who came to the area to help with the cleanup. During COVID-19, we’re seeing local-area businesses go through the same process of pivoting for new opportunities: distillers develop hand sanitizers and sock manufacturers sew masks. The inaugural Pirate Entrepreneurship Challenge winner, Simple and Sentimental, has even created a personalized quarantined-themed gift boxes centered around birthdays, Mother’s Day and graduations.”

“These are the kinds of creative entrepreneurial opportunity recognition behaviors that make organizations resilient in times of crisis,” Madden added.

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