Zoom-based lecture by Knar Khachatryan, Ph.D., visiting Fulbright Scholar at Auburn University and vice-provost for integration and associate professor (College of Business and Economics) at the American University of Armenia.

This event is co-sponsored by the Manoogian Simone College of Business and Economics (MSCBE) at the American University of Armenia.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Pacific Time)

The COVID-19 outbreak generated unprecedented multifaceted crises for economies all over the world. Policymakers and scholars are exploring the global economic turmoil caused by COVID-19 and are uncovering its impact on different business sectors, both in industrialized and in developing countries.

In the fall of 2020, as the world was facing this pandemic, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh were thrust into a war against Azerbaijan, which started on September 27 and lasted 44 days. Beyond the violence and loss of life, both COVID-19 and the 44-day war triggered huge systematic shocks for Armenian enterprises. 

This study aims to retrieve the factors which can explain different firms’ resilience towards these shocks by bringing forward questions which closely relate to organizational change and learning. How do companies respond to crises? What factors lead to successful organizational change? Due to the high-risk environment in which companies currently operate, these questions have recently gained more attention from practitioners, civil society organizations, policymakers and scholars. This study explores these questions through the lenses of (i) decision-making process, (ii) corporate social responsibility (CSR) and (iii) internal policies.

This project is co-authored with Dr. Aleksandr Grigoryan, Associate Professor, College of Business and Economics at the American University of Armenia. Two graduate students were engaged as research assistants. 

The Project is conducted as part of the “Civil Society Support for Ensuring Impact on Reforms” project funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and implemented by Eurasia Partnership Foundation.

Knar Khachatryan, Ph.D., is a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Auburn University, AL. She holds a position of Vice-Provost for Integration and Associate professor (College of Business and Economics) at American University of Armenia. Her scholarly activity focuses on financial inclusion, poverty, gender and conflict studies. Her publications have appeared in International Migration, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Review of Development Economics, Journal of Eastern European Economics, Strategic Change and many other international scholarly journals. She is an Associate Researcher at the Center for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi), Belgium. Dr. Khachatryan holds a PhD in Management from SKEMA Business School and Doctorate in Economics from University of Cote d’Azur, France.