Is the coronavirus pandemic and corresponding economic downturn a time to halt acquisitions or pursue them? There are high profile examples of each. Boeing, for example, has abandoned a $4 billion deal to acquire 80% of Embraer’s commercial jet business and a 49% stake in a joint venture producing a new military cargo jet. At the same time, companies such as Google Cloud, Nestle SA, BlackRock, the British clothing company Boohoo, and others have all publicly stated that they are open to acquisitions despite the uncertainty created by coronavirus....

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly struck a note of optimism on this website earlier this year, crediting a number of companies for moving early to address the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and calling on others to “lead with purpose and humanity.” The compassionate response of the business community was indeed impressive at a critical moment of crisis. But, as time has passed, people are calling for more than just random acts of humanitarianism. They want a sustained, thoughtful, and authentic response on the part of business, one that can deliver broader, long-term impact....

How many of us are currently living without margins — the space to handle life’s simplest stresses. I know I’ve fallen into this trap myself. It can happen after being mentally stretched and dealing with chronic stress for too long. Basically, we are left with zero margin for error. It also means that we don’t realize we’re at our max until it’s too late. Before we know it, we’ve hit the wall. As part of the research that I’m doing for my forthcoming book on burnout, I spoke with Dr. Marie Asberg, MD, psychiatrist, expert in exhaustion disorder, and professor at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. It’s from Dr. Asberg that I learned about “hitting the wall.” She describes this as the moment “where some additional burden is placed on the employee and they experience a mental break.” She showed me the evolution of this disorder over an 18-month period. An employee tends to experience small ebbs and flows of stress and then suddenly, a cliff. That one stressor isn’t any different from any others, it’s just the final blow — the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The margins eventually give way....

There is no doubt that the coronavirus is driving a macroeconomic meltdown around the world. In the U.S. and elsewhere, heavy job losses will likely drive unemployment figures to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Fiscal efforts to contain the crisis are pushing deficits to levels last seen during World War II. Both developments have spurred fears and commentary that the crisis is spiraling into either a depression or a debt crisis....