Identifying the CFO Skills to Achieve Business Recovery in the Covid-19 Postcrisis Period: A Delphi Study

The pandemic of COVID-19 is posing a threat to businesses around the world, prompting them to reconsider their business strategies in order to survive. Businesses have had to confront a variety of concerns, such as supply chain interruptions, shifting customer behaviours, employee safety, and new work environments. The C-suite must demonstrate grace under pressure when the business is in crisis mode, and the CFO must understand the worst-case scenario of the pandemic and its impact, assess the company's liabilities, and begin planning an appropriate response. Even after the Covid-19 crisis, CFOs need the necessary competencies and skills to help businesses recover from the Covid-19 crisis. There is a wealth of study on how leaders behave in times of crisis; however there is less research on the leadership skills needed after a crisis, and there is still a knowledge gap on which leadership abilities are necessary after a crisis. The purpose of this Delphi research was to pinpoint the leadership traits necessary to foster organizational adaptability and behave honorably throughout Covid-19's post-crisis period. The CFO abilities that support the possession of the competences necessary for a Covid-19 postcrisis leadership CFO were identified by this study using a three-round Delphi methodology. This study indicates that the aim of promoting business agility after Covid-19 crisis requires the skills of the CFOs, those are: postcrisis vision development, supply chain protection, tighter cash management, digital way of working and thinking differently to capture new opportunity.