This study investigates whether there is a difference in the impact of franchisor's governance mechanisms on relational performance before and after a crisis to provide insights for crisis management strategy. Specifically, our study examines how franchisor's ex ante governance mechanisms (i.e., incentives) and ex post governance mechanisms (i.e., enforcement) affect a franchisee's perceived relationship satisfaction and a financial performance by comparing before and after such crisis. As this study examines during the pandemic, franchisees were asked about their perceptions of their relationship satisfaction with the franchisor both before and during the pandemic. Although the results demonstrate that the governance mechanisms (i.e., incentives and enforcement) have no significant effect on relationship satisfaction, these effects are significant when the crisis happens as we expect. Moreover, the positive effect of a relationship satisfaction on a financial performance strengthens during the pandemic. For these reasons, this study can provide implications for franchisor's effective crisis management strategy in the franchise industry when the unexpected changes by the external factor rais4e the need for appropriate crisis management.