Could board directors and executives have anticipated the pandemic? Yes, responded Louise Pentland, an executive at PayPal, the payments company, and a non-executive director of Japan’s Hitachi, during a recent webinar. Would the prospect of a global shutdown have been taken seriously enough to create a “full playbook” for a pandemic? “I don’t think so. I really don’t.”
It is taken seriously now. Company directors have scrambled to respond to coronavirus and its consequences. The crisis is testing the resilience of the “G” in the ESG triad of environmental, social and governance responsibilities.
Boards handle normal business risk through ordinary processes such as audit, and company-specific risks through business continuity programmes and contingency planning. But few if any had prepared a plan for the first shockwave of a global pandemic whose impact on business has outweighed the disruption of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US or the 2008 financial crisis.
Louise Pentland of PayPal and Hitachi: 'We have to anticipate that this could happen again and now we have to be ready for it'
The crisis has also sent companies back to their core principles. “Empathy and the humanitarian element of leadership” play a particularly important role in this crisis, Ms Pentland told the webinar on the governance implications of Covid-19, organised by the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).
Faced with such an emergency, there is simply no time to assemble the “ideal” board. But as former BT chief executive and serial board director Peter Bonfield, currently chair of NXP Semiconductors, puts it, “when push comes to shove, your [board’s] culture and style can sort ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
