Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives and Programs in the Health System of Greece due to the Pandemic of COVID-19

Coronavirus consists of Scylla of health threat and the Charybdis of economic recession, which is comparable to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Great Depression of 1929, respectively. The current pandemic has caused more than 500 M cases and more than 6 M deaths globally up to April 2022 (John Hopkins University, 2022). In Greece, which has passed an over 10-year economic depression since 2009 in the wake of the international financial crisis of 2008–2009, the advent of coronavirus appears as its continuation with much more intense and complicated characteristics. A lot of firms have applied urgent corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to protect their employees and empower the national health system, and this necessity has marked the creation of a new universal urgent CSR type called critical CSR (Panagiotopoulos, International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 6:10, 2021). Unequivocally, the biggest burden is laying on the health sector which must face a novel coronavirus which demands new medicines, new vaccines, and enormous capacity for hospitalized cases, especially in intensive care units (ICUs). If the previous economic crisis was about trust among people, firms, and governments (Lins et al., The Journal of the American Finance Association LXXII:1785–1824, 2017), this double financial and health crisis is the chance for corporations to build the trust needed for their sustainable development (Panagiotopoulos, International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 6:10, 2021). Hospitals of public and private sectors as the main pylons of a health system are in the frontline of the pandemic and have been forced to outperform under these unprecedented conditions. Both private and public healthcare organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, have operated with strict criteria concerning their core activities and have additionally made endeavors to respond to increased needs for healthcare services by any means. Part of their activities could be considered as urgent CSR initiatives due to the pandemic. These critical CSR programs whether they have an official CSR form or not have enhanced the sustainability of our world (Panagiotopoulos, International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility 6:10, 2021). The lessons learnt from the pandemic era and the experience aggregated in the design and implementation of critical CSR policies could raise higher the standards of accountability and responsibility in healthcare sector for the period aftermath the pandemic. Furthermore, the conclusions from this period could be useful for the design of modern CSR programs and the empowerment of health systems against future pandemics.