For some the health crisis has turned into an economic and social crisis that is generating profound changes in corporate management practices. Corporate social responsibility can play a concrete role in the functioning of post-crisis companies.

Integrated into its global strategy, CSR allows companies to be more agile and improve their performance. Indeed, it questions a whole series of dimensions to achieve financial savings, better control its risks, develop innovative offers, differentiate from competitors, attract and retain financial and technical partners, employees … If most large companies have, for over a decade, developed and then fleshed out an ad hoc strategy, only those who had truly taken into account their relationship with their employees, suppliers and local communities, and then adequately transformed their organisation, the best performing have been able to cope with the pandemic with agility. 

In Morocco, companies from all sectors joined the national solidarity movement to face the negative effects of the pandemic, motivated mainly by a sense of citizenship and patriotism. We note that CSR-labeled companies have mobilized to implement all necessary actions to protect their stakeholders while maintaining the continuity of their business. But this positive contribution, at the social and societal levels, should not hide the great difficulties that companies are facing today. Thus, some CSR commitments remain difficult to apply in these times of crisis for some structures, especially SMEs.

In the current context, it is obviously not easy to not continue to be concerned about the well-being of employees, changes in business models, recycling … But the post-Covid period will be a period of important decisions for companies. They must legitimize their CSR policy in the face of the crisis. Eventually, CSR will have to be part of the company’s strategic thinking and will have to take into account, as part of the social challenges, the safety of employees and more generally of society’s stakeholders.

With COVID-19, it is expected that CSR will not be confined and will not be banned from the strategies and policies of large companies, even for a short time. There is an obvious point to be made here: CSR is a condition for the sustainability and survival of companies, even in a context of global health crisis. A paradigm shift is thus inevitable and CSR, in the post-Covid phase, will come-back in force, taking on innovative forms.