The launch of this special issue coincided with a pivotal period in history, when the vast majority of countries and populations worldwide were navigating the uncertain path out of the confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was not the first attempt at decontamination, nor was it sure that we would finally be able to return to the normal functioning of our economy and society in general.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented disruption of economic and social activities. Offices closed, universities and schools without students or teachers, and businesses deemed non-vital were forced to close.

The pandemic has brought us face to face with the first peril we face - death - and forced us to live with it daily, while the capitalist society we have adopted has tried by every means possible - frenetic consumerism, the race for performance and the all-out commodification of human activities - to sublimate the feeling of finitude. As a result, our relationship with ourselves and with others has been turned upside down. The other has become a source of contagion and therefore of danger, and distance, in societies that had learned to break it down and tame it, has now become a rule of survival. This distance is consented to and inflicted on oneself out of love for one’s kind and the perception of danger that each person embodies.

Distrust and mistrust were the watchwords of human life confined under the pandemic. Less surprisingly, at least for keen observers of society and human interaction, the decision to confine human beings to enclosed spaces brought to light the paradoxes and inconsistencies of the capitalist mode of production that we have raised as a totem. There are glaring inequalities between rich and poor, between young and old, between large companies lavished with subsidies and public money to the point of bulimia, and small and very small companies swept away by the cyclone of cascading bankruptcies and the shutdown of their production tools, and inequalities between countries in their access to vaccines, etc. As in times of war, certain professions and social categories, once invisible and unthought of, were quickly placed on the front line as an offering on the altar of the great upheaval. Realizing that specific vital sectors were being deprived, the appetite for tinkering was never so whetted, calling into question the supposed rationality and perceptiveness of the choices made by political leaders. Hesitations, prevarications, contested choices, and accusations of collusion with pharmaceutical laboratories - the public authorities had their work cut out for them during the pandemic. Taking advantage of this moment of severe and impromptu disruption, the State nonetheless regained a semblance of its omnipotent power of legitimate violence by forcing us to shut ourselves away in closed spaces and depriving us of the fundamental right of freedom of movement. Despite reminders of the fundamental values and principles that comprise the myths of modern Western society, which has established individual freedom as an inalienable right (Friedland & Alford, 1991), submission to confinement has been massive. Whether this was a case of renunciation or a full-scale test of the resilience of the values that underpin modern Western society is a question worth asking.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic also provided fertile ground for experimenting with new ways of working, consuming, coordinating, and interacting, as well as reimagining spaces and boundaries between humans and non-humans. A dramatic episode for most, with its heavy toll of social and psychological consequences, but also an extraordinary parenthesis for rethinking the normal and experimenting with a new normality.

It is from this angle of normality and the new normality that we have chosen to focus this special issue. The aim is to take a distant and critical look at the COVID-19 pandemic and consider it not simply as a destabilising event in the environment, but rather as a momentum that triggered the gestation of a new normality. Like Donthu & Gustafsson (2020), He and Harris (2020), and Raghavan et al. (2021), we believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has systemic effects on many areas of economic and social life. The primary aim of this special issue is to explore, question, and understand the post-COVID-19 era as a reflection and consequence of the way we lived, felt, and acted during the pandemic management.

Two central trends emerge from this special issue. The first relates to the driving and central role of resilience in constructing the new normality. The articles by Ben Arfi and Cherbib, as well as those by Tanveer et al., are in this vein.

The second trend, as illustrated in this special issue by articles from Cuenoud et al. and Bélisle et al., highlights the role of technology, particularly digital technologies, in the emergence of new normalities.

In their article, Ben Arfi and Cherbib examine the relationship between organisational resilience (OR) and strategic agility (SA) during periods of great turbulence and crisis, using the COVID-19 pandemic as the context for their study. Based on a qualitative study conducted among 11 French companies between April 2020 and March 2021, the authors show that SA plays a catalytic role in ensuring OR, particularly through flexibility, reallocation of resources, collective unity, and strategic anticipation. Ben Arfi and Cherbib point out that the new normality in organisations is based on the ability to reconfigure business activities and the organisational structure in record time in order to respond to crises. Strategic renewal capabilities that require constant rethinking of the business model have also been identified. The article highlights the importance of involving all the company’s stakeholders, including customers, shareholders, employees, and leaders. Also, it reveals a new norm in change and organisational engineering, which involves co-constructing organisational processes with all stakeholders, both external and internal.

In the same vein as the study of organisational resilience, Tanveer, Ali Gull, Boubaker, and Manita focus on the nature of the business strategies most likely to respond to a severe crisis and prepare for the new normal. Based on a large sample of 2606 Chinese companies, the article shows that a proactive strategy contributes more to organisational resilience than a defensive strategy. Companies that rethought their offerings during the pandemic and strengthened their connections with customers and the market showed greater resilience than those that, as a precaution, reduced activity and attempted to mitigate the negative consequences as best they could on a defensive basis. These conclusions align with the paper by Ben Arfi and Cherbib on the need for strategic renewal in times of crisis.

However, the work of Tanveer et al. offers some interesting nuances regarding the limits of the causality between proactivity and resilience. The authors clearly show that large public companies were more resilient than small private companies. This study, grounded in the theoretical frameworks of the resource approach and dynamic capabilities theory, investigates the impact of COVID-19 and business strategy on the performance of Chinese firms, as well as the moderating effect of business strategy on the relationship between COVID-19 and firm performance. The results of this study raise central questions about the role of governance in the relationship between proactivity and resilience. It appears that stable governance with a long-term perspective, as opposed to governance with a short-term perspective, is an undeniable asset in building organisational resilience.

The manuscript, written by Thibault Cuenoud, Rey Dang, L’Hocine Houanti, Jean-Michel Sahut, and Zahir Yanat, examines micro-donations in an increasingly digital world, assuming that digital technology is the new normal for donations and counter-donations.

In this manuscript, the gift is considered to be outside the market and, therefore, a priori, outside the scope of traditional economic analysis. The authors draw on the sociological approach taken by Mauss (2007), Lévi-Strauss (1949), Godelier (1995), and Alter (2009) to highlight the quid pro quo for the gift, or counter-gift. Cuenoud et al. have investigated whether rounding or micro-giving at the point of sale fosters philanthropic renewal in the era of digital giving.

The results of the study highlight three key points: (1) rounding up at the checkout is a social innovation that enables consumers to donate at the point of sale, by putting them in touch with charitable organisations; (2) this social innovation facilitates the act of giving for both donors and recipients, thanks to the simplicity and efficiency of the underlying financial process. However, technology is not the determining factor in the motivation to give. (3) Micro-donations represent a new form of commitment, similar to “impure” donations, made in exchange for emotions, prestige, or the pleasure of giving (Evren & Minardi, 2017). This type of donation is not based on donors’ expectations of reciprocity from a community.

These results raise questions about Mauss’s (2007) theory of giving and receiving. Two fundamental Maussian concepts are not observed: the obligation of reciprocity and the creation of social links. All that remains is a vague feeling of contributing to social relations. Although Keohane’s (2020) work sheds light on forms of solidarity, micro-donations - and more specifically the created ARRONDI here - appear to be a fundamentally subjective and projected form of giving, rather than a verified experience.

The results of this study also show that technology primarily improves collection efficiency without significantly increasing the likelihood of making a micro-donation. Consequently, digital tools could be used to develop micro-donation strategies in order to diversify the donor base and reach young people in particular. This is to implement a micro-donation strategy using new digital tools.

The fourth article, by Bélisle et al, examines the determinants of future intention to use public health mobile applications dedicated to COVID-19 and to issuing alerts about cases of contagion. The theoretical framework encompasses variables from the literature on consumer adoption of information technology and health psychology, and is grounded in the theory of planned behavior. Latent class regression revealed the existence of two groups of users. First, perceived usefulness was the main driver of future intention to use, followed by perceived social influence. For the second group, perceived social influence was paramount, followed by perceived personalisation of the application and perceived risk of COVID-19 infection. The results align with previous research, which highlights the importance of perceived usefulness, social influence, and personalization in technology adoption. The results of the study show that, unlike previously studied technology acceptance factors such as ease of use and perceived risk, these factors do not have a significant impact on future intention to use for any of the groups identified.

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