Chow Dawn Yi Lin, Petrou Andreas, Procopiou Andreas
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Asia Competitiveness Institute, National University of Singapore, 259772, Oei Tiong Ham Building, Singapore.
Cyprus University of Technology, 30 Arch. Kyprianos Str, 3036 Limassol, Cyprus.
J Bus Ethics. 2022 Aug 3:1-18. doi: 10.1007/s10551-022-05216-9.
This first wave study of the Covid-19 pandemic investigates why the governments of different countries proceeded to lockdown at different speeds. We draw upon the literature on Corporate Governance Institutions (CGIs) to theorize that governments' decision-making is undertaken in the light of prevailing beliefs, norms, and rules of the collectivity, as portrayed by the focal country's CGIs, in their effort to maintain legitimacy. In addition, drawing on motivated cognition we posit that the government's political ideology moderates this relationship because decision-makers are biased when assessing the impact of lockdown on commerce. Running negative binomial regressions on a sample of 125 countries, we find that the more shareholder-oriented the CGIs, the slower the governmental response in shutting down the economy to protect from the pandemic. Moreover, the main relationship is stronger the more right-leaning the government's ideology. Our study contributes to the research on corporate governance institutions and political ideology and illustrates how societal and ideological biases affect government decision-making, especially when important decisions about public welfare are taken with little information on hand.
这项关于新冠疫情的首波研究调查了不同国家政府为何以不同速度实施封锁。我们借鉴公司治理制度（CGIs）的文献进行理论推导，认为政府的决策是根据焦点国家的公司治理制度所描绘的集体的主流信念、规范和规则做出的，目的是维护合法性。此外，基于动机性认知，我们假定政府的政治意识形态会调节这种关系，因为决策者在评估封锁对商业的影响时存在偏见。对125个国家的样本进行负二项回归分析后，我们发现公司治理制度越以股东为导向，政府为防范疫情而关闭经济的反应就越迟缓。此外，政府意识形态越倾向于右翼，这种主要关系就越强。我们的研究为公司治理制度和政治意识形态的研究做出了贡献，并说明了社会和意识形态偏见如何影响政府决策，尤其是在几乎没有可用信息的情况下做出有关公共福利的重要决策时。
