Are women managers and relational capital supporting firms' resilience? An answer from the wine industry

The health emergency due to Covid-19 requires scholars to investigate its effects on companies. In this paper, we face the topic focusing on the role played by women managers. To achieve the research objectives, we use a qualitative research method based on a polar case study analysis. That is a wine cooperative where the quality manager, a strategic function in the wine sector, is a young woman oenologist. Our results show that female managerial skills are drivers of critical success factors, strengthening companies’ responses to the crisis and their relationship with institutional stakeholders. This paper contributes to existing studies on management literature, focusing on companies’ needs to develop real and virtual relationships with external stakeholders and encourage female management.