Changes in Management Trends in 100 Global Companies before and after COVID-19: A Topic Modeling Approach
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4.2. Topic-Modeling Analysis Results
In this study, the R program was used to extract key topics and conduct a topic-modeling analysis of CEO messages from Fortune Global 100 companies at points in time before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first topic derived in Table 3, before COVID-19, consists of related words: growth, business, work, risk, sustainability, platform, mobility, and improvement. This topic comprises the content related to risk management. Risk management is a core element of the strategic activities of all organizations [48]. Common risk factors related to sustainability in various industrial sectors, such as logistics and transportation, include greenhouse gas emissions, natural disasters, energy consumption, and environmental damage [49]. Consequently, ongoing disruptions in social, political, and economic environments; competition among firms; and technological development have urged firms to establish robust risk management systems [50].
The second topic consists of related words such as development, strategy, opportunity, global, community, healthcare, revenue, oil, retail, and expectations. This topic comprises content related to market expansion. Global companies incur higher fixed costs for market expansion through new openings in order to pursue new opportunities [51,52,53]. The frequency of international expansion in a given year also determines the level of internationalization in the following year, which is an important factor in increasing firm level [54].
The third topic consists of terms such as technology, capability, process, cloud, commercial, application, 5G, price, trust, tax, dividend, and others. This topic comprises the content related to operational efficiency. Companies have been migrating software-based applications to the cloud (the process of moving applications, data, infrastructure, security, and other objects to a cloud-computing environment) or distributing them to deliver new services and value more quickly, improve operational efficiency, and increase revenue. Thus, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has seen an increased level of interest in the need for innovative information technology (IT) infrastructure through automation, as companies worldwide take advantage of IT applications to leverage advanced technologies [55].
The fourth topic consists of related words such as customers, employees, people, solutions, profits, policies, benefits, and culture. This topic comprises content related to customer-centered innovation and culture. The pandemic has highlighted the ethical aspects of consumer decision-making, leading to a shift towards more responsible and socially conscious consumption. This change is likely to be reflected in corporate operations [4]. As the structure generates revenue and profit by selling to customers, it has been proposed that companies must focus on developing core competencies that help create sustainable customer satisfaction [56]. Therefore, it is evident that stakeholders have a significant interest in customer-centric cultures.
The fifth topic consists of related words such as company, potential, corporate, progress, digital, change, experience, data, supply, mobile, and lead. This topic comprises content related to digital integration. During the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the development of IT saw a surge in interest that demanded a new term: digitalization [57]. However, despite the diversity of technological innovations and methods, actual digital transformation has taken much longer and faced more difficulties than digital business development companies, which is expected to be owing to resistance to change and other reasons [58]. This indicates that companies focus on digital marketing across platform and business domains.
The sixth topic consists of terms such as service, management, energy, economy, vehicles, gas, power, demand, vision, network, and electricity. This topic comprises content related to energy innovation. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions, a significant concern for economic growth, has led to changes in sustainable environmental regulations through energy efficiency and other low-carbon technologies [59,60,61,62]. Additionally, smart grids were introduced during this period, indicating that content related to smart devices and renewable energy sources were major issues.
After COVID-19, the first topic derived in Table 4 shows that growth, economy, fiscal, serve, diversity, interest, united, individual, post, contribute, and so on are composed of related words. This is a new value creation topic, indicating that the content is related to the creation of new value. Value creation is at the core of business model research, enabling new business practices in crises of unprecedented scale and promoting economic value creation worldwide, led by companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google [63]. Therefore, it can be viewed as a strategy by which companies contribute to corporate outcomes through new value creation during the COVID-19 pandemic [63].
The second topic consists of related words, such as global, technology, pandemic, COVID-19, transformation, supply, environment, insurance, and safety. It comprises content related to environmental sustainability. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of corporate environmental sustainability strategies has skyrocketed as a sustainable development goal to be achieved now and in the future [64]. Therefore, it can be seen as a strategy through which companies focus on value creation, not only in the internal environment but also on external environmental factors.
The third topic consists of related words such as industry, network, corporate, solution, risk, 5G, organization, role, strategy, and report. It comprises content related to CSR and leadership. Leadership is one of the core elements in developing and implementing CSR strategies; from a CSR perspective, leadership improves overall corporate performance and is considered a core element of business ethics [65,66,67,68,69]. In particular, the support of leaders is critical to the success of CSR outcomes [70,71], as senior management, such as the CEO, are closely related to the successful establishment and implementation of CSR policies. Therefore, this can be viewed as a strategy by which companies seek to improve their corporate outcomes through CSR activities.
The fourth topic consists of the following related words: management, energy, health, sustainability, share, emissions, initiative, climate, platform, life, profit, cloud and esg. It can be seen that this comprises content related to climate change initiatives. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought environmental issues to the forefront, with increased attention on climate change and global warming. As a result, interest in carbon capture and utilization has also risen simultaneously [70]. Particularly, within corporations, the CO2 value chain is considered to be a significant issue as it transcends mere emission reduction activities and becomes integral to business operations [70]. Hence, it can be observed that global companies are preparing for sustainable development with a heightened focus on carbon neutrality after COVID-19.
The fifth topic consists of the following related words: world, system, sales, board, policy, experience, access, purpose, efficiency, and principles. It can be seen that this comprises content related to ethics and compliance policy. As the digital age develops, technology challenges traditional ethical decisions and creates new social issues [71]. This provides insights into companies’ efforts to recognize and solve problems.
The sixth topic consists of related words such as business, group, continue, time, innovation, future, increase, gas, importance, data, carbon, cost, project, provide, internal, and governance, esg, and others. It comprises content related to ESG management. ESG is one of the sustainable management strategies of a company that occurs in the risk management dimension and not in the social responsibility dimension [72]. Many companies actively participate in environmental protection activities to reduce greenhouse gas, energy use, and waste emissions. Companies can view sustainable innovation as a strategy for simultaneously pursuing and managing ESG-based social and economic values.
The seventh topic consists of related words such as company, customer, development, service, people, community, digital, support, asset, society, change, increased, healthcare, core, achieve, culture, smart, strategy, position, post, current, target, AI, risk, built, and medical. It can be seen that this comprises content related to digital transformation: the COVID-19 situation further amplified and accelerated the digital transformation of companies [73]. In particular, beyond medical devices and services functioning as one and complementary to each other, software-based medical devices and digital therapeutics are now appearing in the medical field and changing many business models. This indicates that companies contribute to technological development at a rapid pace and formulate various strategies, such as expanding related businesses.
Figure 4 and Figure 5 display the results of Intertopic Distance Map (IDM) analysis for the topics related to COVID-19 extracted through topic modeling. IDM is a diagram that visualizes the size of topics and the distance between them, illustrating the extent to which each topic is related to the others and their degree of similarity. Upon observing the distribution of topics before and after, it is evident that the size of each topic is generally similar with no significant deviation. In addition, the circles do not overlap and are slightly distant from each other, indicating a limited relationship between topics. This suggests that each topic is divided into separate themes [74].
4.3. Comparative Analysis of Topics before and after COVID-19
While each topic is distinctly outlined, there are some commonalities or topics that are similar yet different both before COVID-19 and after COVID-19. The initial topics that exhibit consistency in the evolution of corporate management trends are the earlier TOPIC 1 (risk management) and TOPIC 6 (energy innovation), and the subsequent TOPIC 2 (environmental sustainability) and TOPIC 4 (climate change initiatives). Global companies’ pursuit of sustainability has been increasingly recognized as an effective strategy for solving a variety of challenges, both before and after COVID-19 [35]. This approach leads to enhanced competitiveness, improved financial outcomes, and the mitigation of potential business risks [77,78].
The United Nations Global Compact and Business for Scalable Responsibility (2010) report suggests that common sustainability-related risks in many industrial sectors include environmental damage, greenhouse gas emissions, natural disasters, energy consumption, waste, logistics, and transportation. This perspective implies that interest in sustainability stabilized around COVID-19 from the CEO’s perspective, after which the significance of climate change, among many other risks, was accentuated. Consequently, issues related to sustainable and environmental innovation strategies, such as carbon neutrality, energy efficiency, and environmentally friendly resources, are gaining prominence.
The second shared theme included TOPIC 2 (market expansion) and TOPIC 3 (operational efficiency), followed by TOPIC 1 (value creation), TOPIC 5 (ethical and compliance policies), and TOPIC 6 (ESG management). ESG issues have garnered attention from businesses and governments since their initial mention in the 2006 United Nations Report [79]. Having evolved into a core component of non-financial outcomes, ESG later developed into the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and expanded into the globally recognized concept of socially responsible investment [80,81]. In major developed countries such as the United States, Europe, and Japan, socially responsible investing, which focuses on environmentally friendly and ethical companies, has thrived in capital markets. By 2020, the growth rate of ESG funds surpassed USD 1 trillion owing to the impact of COVID-19, leading to a rapid expansion in the scale of global investment associated with corporate ESG activities [80].
ESG issues also impact the operational efficiency of the supply chain, and effective ESG implementation can not only help to reduce increasing operating costs (e.g., raw material costs and actual social costs of water and carbon) but can also significantly impact a company’s operating income. Therefore, companies have continued to address a variety of issues in their core strategies, including new value creation and investments, to equip themselves with global competitive advantage.
Although some of these topics are similar, others differ. The first topic with differences in the changing face of corporate strategy trends is the earlier TOPIC 4 (customer-centric innovation), and the later TOPIC 3 (CSR and leadership). This reflects the different types of stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and communities [9]; before COVID-19, customer- and employee-centric marketing strategies were developed to increase customer satisfaction and achieve excellent operational results [82,83].
However, since the outbreak of COVID-19, firms have had to respond quickly to rapid market fluctuations. They also need to improve their overall corporate performance, including economic and social outcomes, to manage risk. Therefore, we identified policy formulation and implementation by the board of directors, including the CEO, as closely related to CSR strategies [84]. Thus, since COVID-19, the topic addressing corporate leadership has been gaining ground as a core strategic element from a CSR perspective.
The second topic with a difference is the earlier TOPIC 5 (digital integration) and the later TOPIC 7 (digital transformation): before COVID-19, IT had developed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the industrial world was evolving into the digital age [59,85]. However, despite technological innovations and various avenues to implement the program in governments, companies, and society as a whole, digital transformation took much longer and faced many difficulties; ultimately, digital transformation issues gradually declined [60,86].
However, after COVID-19, the feasibility of digitalization increased rapidly [87]. A crisis of unprecedented scale demonstrated the impact of digital transformation, as companies responded quickly to change. At Build 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “COVID is more critical than ever, with digital transformation taking two years to achieve in the past two months” [88]. Thus, companies went from an emergency response to a recovery phase, and the emergence of this issue highlights the importance of digital technology in establishing corporate strategies in the future. Figure 6 illustrates the topics that show similarities and differences as a result of the IDM analysis.
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