Управление заинтересованными сторонами в малом и среднем бизнесе в эпоху кризиса пандемии COVID-19 на примере российской индустрии общественного питания

Research Motivation
COVID-19, which has become a global pandemic, has affected all areas of life in all countries – education, trade, the functioning of corporations, etc. The lockdown caused by the unprecedented spread of the coronavirus has caused huge damage to large companies and productions, but small and medium enterprises became the most vulnerable part of businesses – 70% of SMEs in Europe argue that in 2020 their revenues severely declined (McKinsey 2020). The reason to that is that SMEs are overrepresented in the most suffering business spheres, such as catering, services, etc. Also, SMEs employ 45 percent in emerging countries and about 70 percent in OECD countries (Albaz et al. 2020).
The Russian economy has also suffered – according to Rosstat, in 2020, GDP decreased by 3.1% – this is due to the introduced restrictive measures aimed at combating coronavirus infection, and the fall in global demand for energy resources. Significantly reduced value added in industries focused on serving the population: hotels and restaurants (-24.1%), cultural and sports institutions (-11.4%), transport enterprises (-10.3%), organizations that provide other services to the population (-6.8%) (Rosstat 2020). Most universities have switched to distance learning; most regions have closed trade and service enterprises and restaurants. There are still no data on the share of SMEs in Russia’s GDP, but according to data from previous years, this figure was about 20%. Since the share of SMEs is 1/5 of all enterprises, it is obvious that they have a huge impact on GDP and the economy as a whole.
Most of the spheres, which are mainly represented by SMEs, were included in the state list of those most affected by the coronavirus: culture, hotel business, catering, consumer services, retail. This list was approved by the Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation of 03.04.2020 No. 434, as amended: Government Resolutions of 10.04.2020 No. 479, of 18.04.2020 No. 540, of 12.05.2020 No. 657, of 26.05.2020 No. 745, of 26.06.2020 N927 (Consultant Plus 2020).
As coronavirus became a crisis situation, business representatives began to change their strategy and, in particular, their relations with stakeholders (with the government, employees, clients, etc.). The situation with the coronavirus is unique in its way because the pandemic has closed the doors of those enterprises that have been operating for many decades, some of them even during wars or other epidemics, so businesses had to transform and change their relationships with stakeholders. Especially this crisis affected relationships in Russian SMEs, as they are usually
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more dependent on their stakeholders and have closer relations with some groups of stakeholders a priori.
The object of the research is Russian catering SMEs that survived crisis of COVID-19. The subject of the research is stakeholder management as a crisis adaptation strategy.
Research goal
The goal of this research is to make proposals for stakeholder management adaptation to pandemic crisis in Russia SME’s catering sector. In order to achieve the goal, the following research questions were raised:
• What impact had coronavirus pandemic crisis on catering industry in SMEs sector in Russia?
• How this crisis affected relationships of Russian catering SMEs with their stakeholders?
• How Russian catering SMEs should behave in crises like COVID-19 pandemic?
To attain the research goal, the following objectives are set:
• Define theoretical and methodological foundation of stakeholder management.
• Analyze COVID-19 pandemics crisis impact on Russian catering SMEs.
• Define relationships between stakeholder management and firm performance during COVID-19 crisis situation.
• Compile qualitative data in cases and conduct comparative analysis.
• Propose recommendations for Russian catering SMEs in future crisis situations. Theoretical framework
As the theoretical framework for our study, we use classical and contemporary researches on the questions of stakeholder and stakeholder management, crisis management and stakeholder management as crisis adaptation strategy. As a main stakeholder model, we used a framework by Mitchell (1997), where all stakeholders are divided through lenses of power, urgency and legitimacy. The organization should manage different stakeholder differently, according to the level of power, urgency and legitimacy in relation to the organization.
We also use more practice-oriented sources, such as stakeholder management plan, outlined in APMBoK (2012) and materiality matrix, outlined in Global Reporting Initiative and 7

brilliantly applied in Nestle reports. Materiality matrix is a very important framework for our work, as it shows the expectations of stakeholders from the organization and the impact of these expectations on the success of the organization.
As a basis for stakeholder management plan, we use report by Deloitte (2014), recommendations by APMBoK (2012), the work on stakeholder engagement by Neil Jeffrey (2009) and the work of Carroll and Buchholtz (2009). This plan let us understand how to define stakeholders, interact with them and engage them into the processes of the organization.
We also studied application of stakeholder management in crisis situations with the help of works by different authors. The most impact has the study by Crandall, Parnell and Spillan (2009) which describes crisis management framework and includes stakeholder management into it.
Research methodology
In the literature review we look for the correct definition of stakeholder and stakeholder management in order to clearly understand the process of communication between organization and its stakeholders. We also analyze sources on stakeholder management plan, materiality matrix and crisis management strategies in order to implement these frameworks for practical recommendations. In the second part of the research, we focus on small and medium enterprises from catering sphere that exist on a market at least for five years and were functioning during COVID-19 pandemic crisis and lockdowns. The results of this study should help SMEs from catering sphere to build more efficient crisis adaptation strategies through the lens of relationships with their stakeholders.
In order to solve the research goal and to answer research questions, we turned to the scientific literature. We studied the stakeholder model on the example of Mitchell (1997) work “Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts”, as well as stakeholder management on the example of “Stakeholder engagement: A road map to meaningful engagement” by Neil Jeffery (2009) and “Business and society: Ethics and stakeholder management” by Carroll, A. B., & Buchholtz, A. K. (2009). Also, in the course of our research we studied crisis and crisis management on the example of works “Crisis Management in the New Strategy Landscape” by Crandall, W., Parnell, J.A., & Spillan, J.E. (2009), “The crisis manager: Facing risk and responsibility” by Lerbinger, O. (1997) and “Black Swans and the Domains of Statistics” by Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2007).
Also, for the purpose of solving the research goal and answering research questions, we need to collect data ourselves. In order to do this, we use qualitative methods of research. The
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reason to this is that we need to know about the situation directly from its epicenter – from the representatives of Russian SMEs – and to use their real experiences and advices to formulate recommendations.
For this research we need to collect primary data, due to the reason that only by reaching real representatives of businesses and by exploring real-life experience, we could receive extensive up-to-date information on the situation in the catering SMEs during pandemic crisis.
In order to gain better insights into adaptation of catering SMEs into crisis situations, 5 in- depth semi-structured interviews were conducted. We chose such representatives as owners, co- owners, and managers of SMEs, as only real business leaders could give us full understanding of crisis situation in their business and explain strategies and actions applied to deal with the crisis.
After collecting the data, we use the method of multiple cross-case analysis, as this method allows us put each unique situation in a separate case and after that compare the situations and behavior of businesses in crisis. This analysis allows us to formulate recommendations that could be used by catering SMEs for better adapting in future crisis situations.
Thesis structure
The thesis contains 3 parts. The first chapter is a literature review which helps to understand a conceptual base for the research. This chapter discusses main concept of stakeholder model, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management as a whole, as well as reveals crisis and crisis management, COVID-19 crisis peculiarities and its impact on the Russian SMEs, identifies research gap. The second chapter describes the methodology of research, and shows the results of empirical research. The third part, conclusion, includes findings, theoretical contribution, managerial implications and limitations for future research.