Beyond Back to Normal - Business in the Time of Coronavirus

No, not everything is going to be all right. So now, what are we going to do about it? Memento mori.

It has been said that the fundamental structure of the economy was strong before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, but many people in business point to systematic inequality as a vulnerability that contributed to the economic weakness in this crisis.

How can business establish a presence in the marketplace in a time defined by social distance? How can we show up to work when our physical absence is mandatory? This episode considers the conflict in business culture between the urgency of presence and the need for distance.

The disorientation and liminal experience of the COVID-19 crisis brings business culture to opportunities for symbolic improvisation. Will businesses learn to play with these ideas, or resort to the solid and stolid data of literal truth?

The coronavirus pandemic has opened up a strange experience, something anthropologists call the liminal sphere. It's an alternative frame of reality that operates by its own rules. Can business learn to harness the power of ritual without resurrecting ancient regimes of social restriction? The key to this cultural innovation lies in improvisation.

The challenge isn't merely that the COVID-19 crisis puts businesspeople in a situation in which their knowledge is inadequate.The disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic are warping the fundamental dimensions in which business operates, resulting in strange disorientations in the experience of space and time. Is there a framework that could make the disorientation fruitful?

The Business in the Time of Coronavirus research was never intended to be objective. It's a cultural study, so it's inherently subjective. This podcast supplemental episode explains the method of this qualitative research and some of its flaws.

In order to understand the study that forms the foundation of the Beyond Back to Normal podcast, you need to understand me, the researcher. Why? This research wasn’t done by a machine. I make no pretense about it being an objective work of science. It’s not based on hard data, but on the softness of human experience.

One of the themes that stands out immediately in this research is that people in business feel like they don’t know very much about what’s happening in this crisis. The threat of coronavirus is real, but it’s invisible. We can’t quite tell where it is. What is the impact of this great unknowing on the culture of business?

1 month ago, as the COVID-19 shutdown reached a global scale, I began a study of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the culture of business. The results of this research will be explored in a weekly podcast, called Beyond Back to Normal, beginning on Tuesday, April 28.