Introduction: In recent years, national and international events and the effects of globalization in areas such as pandemics, climate change, and terrorist attacks have increased the importance of crisis management strategies. A good crisis management strategy has a special responsibility to help protect the business from the adverse consequences of the crisis. When these responses go wrong, the crisis can escalate. But when the crisis is managed well, the impact of the crisis can be minimized. A poor strategy for crisis management can lead to the certain death of a company, so there is no opportunity to learn from its past mistakes (Kouko, 2015). With the spread of Covid-19, in recent years the world has been involved in an unprecedented crisis. With the reduction of the economic growth rate and in fact the paralysis of the global economy, businesses all over the world were forced to make fundamental changes in their strategies and business models in order to maintain their survival and competitive position (Behl et al., 2023). The main characteristic of crises is their unpredictability, which causes decision makers to be in a situation of anxiety and confusion. The Covid-19 crisis has emerged in various fields, which, due to the lack of similar experience, has endangered not only governments and the medical industry, but also organizations in all sectors. The effects of Covid-19 have been observed worldwide due to its profound impact not only on health, but also on social welfare and economic activities. In fact, the outbreak of Corona is a perfect example of a widespread crisis. Based on the economic surveys that have been conducted so far and during the covid-19 pandemic, it has been shown that the spread of the corona virus has affected economic sectors such as tourism, foreign trade, capital market, foreign exchange market, housing market, small businesses, businesses It has affected public, commodity prices, and GDP. Considering the shocks of this pandemic in the economy, the examined results show that, in addition to the "hotels and restaurants" and "transportation" sectors, the "manufacturing sector and organizations" suffered the most. have had (Hamouche, 2023). In the field of production and government organizations, some of the harmful effects of the Corona crisis are the decrease in government revenues and the increase in the budget deficit due to the economic recession. Naturally, the tax revenue of the government has decreased during the severe decline of oil revenues. On the other hand, sanctions have caused a decrease in production in domestic units. In the field of human resources, the intensification of the pension crisis, which has imposed a heavy financial burden on government organizations and funds due to the increase in casualties and early retirement of some Corona victims (Gigauri, 2020). Therefore, in addition to the production crisis, the country's automobile industry is facing the critical situation of Corona in the country's business. Due to the origin of the corona virus, the suspension of the import of parts from China has made it possible for the production of cars to be incomplete and also to reduce or stop the production of some cars. In this way, although the world's automotive industry has declared a red status due to the spread of Corona and stopped some of their activities, but in Iran, with the early reopening of production, a clear perspective has been seen in the automotive industry. Although it seems that the era of the Covid-19 pandemic has come to an end, it has fundamentally affected the economy and societies. In addition, there is a possibility of crises similar to Covid-19 in the future. Therefore, managers should help by adopting strategies to cope with the challenges caused by the Covid-19 crisis and other similar crises. According to the stated necessity, the aim of the current research is to identify the challenges of the Iran Khodro company crisis during the covid-19 pandemic and the company's crisis management strategies to deal with the challenges, so that in addition to exploring the state of the country's automobile industry during this crisis, a model for facing Future crises should also be presented.
Methodology: The paradigm of the current research is practical, where the main concern is a real and practical answer to the research problem, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Based on this, the approach used in the current research is mixed exploratory, first the qualitative part and then the quantitative part, and the research strategy in the qualitative part is theme analysis and in the quantitative part, descriptive-survey. In the qualitative part, crisis challenges and crisis management strategies were identified through interviews with 16 experts until theoretical saturation was reached. Then, in the quantitative part, in order to test the findings in a larger sample, the questionnaire was distributed among 385 members of the sample and finally, it was examined using statistical tests.
Results and Discussion: In the qualitative part, the number of 32 crisis challenges in six general categories of risk challenges, economic challenges, organizational challenges, management challenges, human resource challenges, and challenges in the field of decision-making and organization and the number of 33 crisis management strategies in five general categories of preventive and supportive measures; Innovative measures in the field of marketing and sales; Innovative measures in the material supply chain; Management of resources and expenses and strategic and entrepreneurial thinking along with related subcategories were identified. In the quantitative part, the questionnaire consisting of crisis challenges and crisis management strategies was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis, as a result of which all questions were confirmed. Also, the challenges and strategies identified in the qualitative part of the research were ranked using the sample t-test method and the Friedman test. Finally, the results of the quantitative section showed that risk challenges (3.72), economic challenges (4.46), organizational challenges (4.44), management challenges (4.55), human resources challenges (4.39), and challenges in the field of decision-making and organization (4/05) is the crisis challenges of Iran Khodro Company during the covid-19 pandemic, and preventive and supportive measures (3/54), innovative measures in the field of marketing and sales (3/33), innovative measures in the material supply chain (3/18), Management of resources and expenses (3/10), strategic and entrepreneurial thinking (3/39), as crisis management strategies of Iran Khodro Company to deal with the challenges.
Conclusion: In general, in this research, the crisis challenges of Iran Khodro Company during the Covid-19 pandemic and the company's crisis management strategies to deal with the challenges have been identified. Based on the results of the research, management challenges, economic challenges, organizational challenges, human resources challenges, challenges in the field of decision-making and organization, and risk challenges have been identified as the crisis challenges of Iran Khodro during the Covid-19 pandemic, and preventive and supportive measures, strategic and entrepreneurial thinking, innovative measures in the field of marketing and sales, innovative measures in the material supply chain, management of resources and expenses are as crisis management strategies of Iran Khodro Company to deal with the identified challenges. Therefore, managers of Iran Khodro Company can consider the challenges identified in this research along with the introduced crisis management strategies; Take more effective steps in order to improve the crisis conditions in similar cases in the future.