Adaptations generated to minimize impacts on foreign trade due to SARS-COV 2: Analysis of the business context

Abstract

Purpose: This research aims to identify the adaptations that Brazilian companies operating in foreign trade have implemented in their operations to mitigate the effects caused by the Covid 19 pandemic on imports and exports in the context of foreign trade.

 Methodology/approach: To enable the achievement of the proposed objectives, a bibliographic literature review was carried out, that is, the scope of the research was broad so that it was possible to identify the actions implemented by companies operating in foreign trade to mitigate the effects caused by COVID-19 pandemic. The articles were collected in the SPELL, Scielo and Google Scholar databases. The data analysis technique used was content analysis (Bardin, 1977).

Originality/Relevance: The article addresses a topic of great importance, there are no studies that identified the actions that were implemented by Brazilian companies in a broad way to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. There are fragmented studies that did not consolidate all the actions that were implemented in the pandemic scenario.

Key findings: The main actions implemented by Brazilian companies operating in foreign trade to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were the reinforcement of hygiene processes, dismissal of employees, changes in meeting methodology and adoption of remote work by their employees

Theoretical/methodological contributions: This research is expected to contribute to the literature on crises, more specifically crisis mitigation strategies, given that the pandemic was a disruptive event and impacted commercial operations around the world. The study also presents managerial contributions, as managers can use the findings of this research to implement actions that aim to reduce damage in other crisis.