Stock Market Reactions to IT Endowment at the Onset of COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis represented an unprecedented test to organizations with respect to its systemic severity and the unique policy response of governments around the world. Policies to curb the pandemic's spread resulted in severe cratering of demand and diverse supply disruptions to firms. Research demonstrates significant heterogeneity in the impacts of the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns on firm performance due to diverse firm characteristics. Our study advances this body of work by assessing the moderating impact of a firm’s pre-existing Information Technology (IT) endowment on changes in market and operational performance caused by the pandemic. Impacts of specific classes of IT investments, analyses of the social media activity of the firm, and textual analyses of news articles pertaining to the firm provide insights into underlying mechanisms. More generally, our results provide insights into the resilience accorded by IT in the face of exogenous disasters.