Examining the issue of employee intentions to learn and adopt digital technology. (Special Issue: How is hospitality education embedding sustainable practices in their curriculum and programme delivery? an Asian perspective.)

Purpose: In the post-COVID-19 era, the hospitality industry is rapidly moving towards digitalization, which requires employees to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Some employees resist those changes and refuse to upgrade their knowledge, skills and ways of doing things. Therefore, there is a need to understand this unexplored area and so this study examines employee intentions to embrace digital technology from the perspective of upgrading their skills and knowledge. The study investigates the moderating role of the employees' resistance to change motive (RCM) on their intention to embrace digital technology, especially in the post-COVID-19 pandemic scenario. Design/methodology/approach: The research is conducted using dynamic capability view (DCV) theory and status quo bias (SQB) theory. Drawing on the existing literature in this area, a theoretical model is developed, which is validated using the structural equation modelling technique to analyse data from hospitality industry employees. Findings: The results indicate that employees' dynamic capability plays a significant role in employees' upgrading their skill and knowledge capabilities, and this significantly improves employee intention to embrace digital technology. It also finds that the employee RCM plays a significant role in the relationship between upgrading skill capability and their knowledge capability to relation to embracing digital technology. Originality/value: The findings could be used by hospitality managers to better understand employee intentions with regard to adopting digital technology, challenges faced and the way forward.

Investigating the predictors and outcomes of social entrepreneurship in post-COVID-19 period: moderating role of dynamic technology capability

In the post-COVID-19 period, social entrepreneurship is becoming extremely important, as it generates employment, and improves economic prosperity and solves various issues for society. Not many studies have attempted to understand the social entrepreneurship phenomena in post-COVID-19 period and its impact on society. Thus, there is a research gap, which this study aims to fill. This paper aims to analyse the impacts of intellectual capital and entrepreneurial ability on social entrepreneurship, and its impact on society in the post-COVID-19 period, moderated by technology capability. By the inputs of literature and lending knowledge from theories, a research model is prepared. It was verified using structural equation modelling with data collected through a survey. The study finds that intellectual capital and entrepreneur ability both significantly and positively impact social entrepreneurship. This study implies that intellectual capital and entrepreneurial ability could impact social entrepreneurship when moderated by technology capability, which in turn has social impact in the post-COVID-19 period. Also, the study highlights the moderating role of technology capability on social entrepreneurship.

The Higher Education Experience of Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Impact on Mental Well-Being: AReview of the Literature

The COVID-19 pandemic substantially impacted higher education worldwide (Yang in High Educ Res Dev 39:1317–1321, 2020). The virus containment measures enforced the closure of the educational institutions and steered the transformation of most learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) to a virtual format (Watermeyer et al. in High Educ, 1–19, 2020). However, this transformation is not without unforeseen consequences (Burns et al. in Front Educ 5:1–10, 2020). This chapter first evaluates the impact of the virtual transformation of higher education on students reviewing research studies across five countries. The result shows that although the students benefited from the flexibility and autonomy of online learning, a few drawbacks of online learning, such as inaccessibility to appropriate digital technology and devices, an absence of face-to-face social interactions with teachers and peers, distance from campus facilities, and prolonged screen time, adversely affected the whole learning experience, with potential mental health consequences. In addition, the lifestyle changes and different pandemic-related stressors triggered negative mental health consequences on students. Subsequently, studies across ten countries are reviewed to understand the mental health challenges and coping strategies adopted by the students during the pandemic. The findings reveal that the students experienced low mental well-being during the pandemic. The prominent symptoms included anxiety, stress and depression with an associated adverse impact on concentration, eating and sleeping. COVID-19 lockdowns intensified mental health challenges and the two-week quarantine periods were an unpleasant experience for students. The students adopted a range of positive and negative coping mechanisms in response to their mental health difficulties. The chapter concludes with suggested measures to minimise the pandemic-related mental health challenges of the students. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.

Perception Regarding Online Teaching among Undergraduate Students of a Peripheral Medical College of West Bengal: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Background: COVID 19 pandemic has severely impacted medical education and residency training all over the world. Tele-teaching via online platforms became an apt solution as a result. This study was conducted on MBBS undergraduate students of Bankura Sammilani Medical College to describe their perception regarding e-learning. Materials and methods: All the students of 4th and 6th semester MBBS of Bankura Sammilani Medical College were given a pre-designed, pre-tested Google form questionnaire and their responses were collected. Results: 73.12% students were satisfied or very satisfied in live lecture class compared to only 28.46% in live practical class. However, for theory classes, majority felt traditional class as superior than online modes with respect to understanding of content (85.77%), less distraction during class (58.10%), interaction with faculty (88.54%), interaction with peers (86.96%), clearing of doubts (83.79%). Virtual mode gained superiority in recording of information (66.40%), flexibility of class timing (64.03%) and flexibility of continuation of class (51.78%). For practical classes, majority thought that traditional modality is better than virtual modes with respect to all the parameters. Conclusion: Majority of students considered traditional teaching as a better mode of teaching than virtual mode of class. © 2022, Medicolegal Association of Maharashtra. All rights reserved.

Disparities in exposure and accessibility to health: A Spatial Assessment of Covid 19 Pandemic Situation of South Bengal

Inequality and disparities of health is prevalent in a developing nation like India. The emergence of the Novel Corona virus has further aggravated this existing problem. The major issue that has been observed in dealing with the pandemic situation is the lack of facilities for testing and inadequate health infrastructure to support the huge population of this nation. This infrastructural deficiency has evidently become severe as we move away from the city areas. In this study, we have tried to assess this rural-urban disparity of health infrastructure in the settings of the COVID 19 pandemic situation. The study has been conducted to measure rural-urban disparities of eight districts i.e. Howrah, Hooghly, Kolkata, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas concerning risk factors and access to health care infrastructure. To achieve the desired objectives, we have used a multidisciplinary technique incorporating statistical, GIS techniques, composite index with several aspects e.g., geographical coverage and sufficiency of COVID care and testing facilities (CCF, CTF), economic status of people, medical costs, and susceptibility to covid risk factors i.e., number of infected populations, and population density. A significant correlation between access to CCF and CTF and the proportion of urban inhabitants has been found, i.e., urban populations mostly enjoy better access to treatment and testing with dense CTFs and CCFs over space. The density and serviceability of care facilities over rural regions decrease with less urbanized areas. Urban areas are found to be at higher risk in terms of the number of active cases, population density. The study helps us to geo visualize the current COVID scenario of South Bengal in terms of regional disparities. This will help us identify the nearest testing and care facilities to any location within the study area and will be useful in mitigating infrastructural lacuna.

Examining the issue of employee intentions to learn and adopt digital technology

Purpose: In the post-COVID-19 era, the hospitality industry is rapidly moving towards digitalization, which requires employees to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Some employees resist those changes and refuse to upgrade their knowledge, skills and ways of doing things. Therefore, there is a need to understand this unexplored area and so this study examines employee intentions to embrace digital technology from the perspective of upgrading their skills and knowledge. The study investigates the moderating role of the employees' resistance to change motive (RCM) on their intention to embrace digital technology, especially in the post-COVID-19 pandemic scenario. Design/methodology/approach: The research is conducted using dynamic capability view (DCV) theory and status quo bias (SQB) theory. Drawing on the existing literature in this area, a theoretical model is developed, which is validated using the structural equation modelling technique to analyse data from hospitality industry employees. Findings: The results indicate that employees' dynamic capability plays a significant role in employees' upgrading their skill and knowledge capabilities, and this significantly improves employee intention to embrace digital technology. It also finds that the employee RCM plays a significant role in the relationship between upgrading skill capability and their knowledge capability to relation to embracing digital technology. Originality/value: The findings could be used by hospitality managers to better understand employee intentions with regard to adopting digital technology, challenges faced and the way forward. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Applications of Industry 4.0 for Pandemic Responses and Business Continuity: A TOE-DCV Integrated Approach

The fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, covers a broad range of technologies. The applications of Industry 4.0 help in interconnectivity as well as automation process and support seamless operations. Not many studies have taken place to examine how different applications of Industry 4.0 could help in turbulent situations or in crises like COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, there is a research gap. In such background, the aim of this study is to investigate how different applications of Industry 4.0 could help to respond to such turbulent situation and help in business continuity and sustainability of operations. The present study develops a theoretical model combining technology–organization–environment framework and dynamic capability view to examine the role of Industry 4.0 applications for business continuity and sustainability of business operations especially for managing any turbulent situation like COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical model was validated using partial least square structural equation modeling technique considering 338 respondents from different industries. The study found that there is a greater need to adopt Industry 4.0 applications for managing business operations during any turbulent situation. The study also found that there is a significant moderating impact of corporate governance in adopting Industry 4.0 applications to manage business operations especially during crisis. IEEE

Mathematical Morphology Adopted Automatic Detection of Ground Glass Opacities in Lung CT Images of COVID-19 Patients

The severity of the nCOVID infection relies on the presence of Ground Glass Opacities (GGO) present in the patient's chest CT scan images. Although, detecting and delineating the precise boundaries of GGO in the chest CT images is challenging. Here, we proposed a fast and novel technique to automatically segment the regions containing GGO in lung CT images using mathematical morphology. We have tested our algorithm on the chest CT images of 145 Covid-positive cases. This unique segmentation approach correctly segments the lung field from chest CT images and identifies GGO with average sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 96.89%, 95.23%, and 97.22%, respectively. We used expert radiologists' hand-curated segmentation of GGO as ground truth for quantificational performance analysis. Our research results indicate that this algorithm performs well found in the literature. © 2023 IEEE.

Investigating the employee's customer orientation behaviour: a comparison of the circumstances before and after the pandemic from policy perspective

Purpose: The aim of this research is to investigate how jay customer influence service employees' customer orientation behaviour before and after COVID-19 from a policy perspective. This study will also assess whether jay customer or abusive supervision had a greater or lesser impact on service workers' emotional stage and customer orientation during COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach: The research adopted longitudinal approach to collect the data from Indian service employees engaged in various service organisations (such as airlines, hotels and restaurants). The gathered data over a 13-month period, with (T1) November 2019 and (T2) December 2020. A total of 412 employees responded to the T1 survey. Thirteen months later, of the 412 T1 respondents, 381 returned the second survey. The data collected through questionnaire via both personally visiting the hotel restaurants and airport and through online mode. The research used structural equation modelling and ANOVA for the analysis of results. Findings: The results revealed that the indirect adverse effect of jay customer and abusive supervision on customer orientation via burnout has increased since the start of the pandemic. Furthermore, due to burnout, jay customers had a greater indirect influence on CO during the pandemic than abusive supervision. The result also shows that male employees experience the uncivil behaviour by the customer and the supervisor more frequently than that of female and transgender employees. These findings can be used to efficiently manage the stress of frontline service workers and to suggest policies during times of crisis, such as COVID-19. Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to the field of behavioural studies, mainly in the context of Indian hospitality industry. Policymakers and future researchers can use these findings to understand different customer-related issues from perceptive of Indian customer. Originality/value: The originality and value of this study is related to its pioneering study of jay customer and abusive supervision before and after COVID-19 from policy perspective of Indian service sector. The value of such research work is associated with both scholarly and executive implications. Regarding the latter, this study examines the myopic nature of uncivil behaviour and helps service firms to understand and manage its different forms, conclusively also providing practicable executive directions on the problem. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Linking Workplace Ostracism to Job Performance: A Conceptual Framework Considering the ‘New Normal' Situation

Workplace ostracism is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is present across the majority of organizations. However, it is often ignored, which results in dire consequences for the employees as well as the organizations. Workplace ostracism directly affects the job performance of employees. Also, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are still adjusting to the "new normal.” As this situation has never been foreseen before, at this point in time, workplace ostracism is becoming an emerging issue across organizations today. This short communication aimed to delve deeper into the phenomenon of workplace ostracism, find out the relationship between workplace ostracism and the employees' job performance, and develop a conceptual model. This conceptual model has been developed with the help of extensive current literature review. The findings revealed that workplace ostracism had an impact on the employees' personal and professional facets, leading to the variation of employee performance. Also, moderating variables like external support, culture, and religiousness remarkably impacted the relationship between workplace ostracism and different facets. As a result, this study can be used as a reference for HR managers to develop strategies to impede the growth of workplace ostracism in their respective organizations. © 2023, Associated Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social Media Sentiment Analysis on Third Booster Dosage for COVID-19 Vaccination: A Holistic Machine Learning Approach

Over a period of more than two years the public health has been experiencing legitimate threat due to COVID-19 virus infection. This article represents a holistic machine learning approach to get an insight of social media sentiment analysis on third booster dosage for COVID-19 vaccination across the globe. Here in this work, researchers have considered Twitter responses of people to perform the sentiment analysis. Large number of tweets on social media require multiple terabyte sized database. The machine learned algorithm-based sentiment analysis can actually be performed by retrieving millions of twitter responses from users on daily basis. Comments regarding any news or any trending product launch may be ascertained well in twitter information. Our aim is to analyze the user tweet responses on third booster dosage for COVID-19 vaccination. In this sentiment analysis, the user sentiment responses are firstly categorized into positive sentiment, negative sentiment, and neutral sentiment. A performance study is performed to quickly locate the application and based on their sentiment score the application can distinguish the positive sentiment, negative sentiment and neutral sentiment-based tweet responses once clustered with various dictionaries and establish a powerful support on the prediction. This paper surveys the polarity activity exploitation using various machine learning algorithms viz. Naïve Bayes (NB), K- Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), and Valence Aware wordbook and sEntiment thinker (VADER) on the third booster dosage for COVID-19 vaccination. The VADER sentiment analysis predicts 97% accuracy, 92% precision, and 95% recall compared to other existing machine learning models. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Examining the Influence of Trustworthiness, Financial Rewards, and Admiration for Crowdsourcing in the Post COVID-19 Period

Over the past two decades, crowdsourcing activities have expanded considerably. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the way people live and work, and the way organizations do business. So far, not many studies have analyzed if and to what extent trustworthiness can influence the admiration to practice crowdsourcing and could reward financial benefits in the COVID-19 period. Against this background, in this article, the aim is to investigate the influence of crowdfunding trustworthiness and financial rewards on the success of crowdsourcing activities. The analysis is made more complete by including technology leadership support as a moderator. With the help of the existing literature and theories, a research model has been developed conceptually, which was later validated using the partial least square-structural equation modeling technique on a sample of 319 responses from participants based in Europe and Asia. The study found that lucidity, gamification, exposure, and coordination along with financial rewards positively influence admiration for crowdsourcing, which, in turn, positively impacts successful crowdsourcing practices in the COVID-19 period. The study also shows that there is a significant moderating impact of technological leadership support on successful crowdsourcing practices in the COVID-19 period. IEEE

Assessment of Psychiatric Morbidity In Healthcare Professionals Working In A Covid Hospital In West Bengal During Covid-19 Pandemic

Introduction: Pandemic, being unprecedented, leads to several mental health problems, especially among the front-line healthcare professionals (HCP). Front-line HCPs often suffer from anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia and stress-related disorders. This is mediated by different biopsychological vulnerabilities of the individuals;socio-environmental factors such as the risk of exposure to infection, availability of personal protective equipment, psychological impact of the isolation/quarantine and interpersonal distancing also play the major roles. Aim(s): This study aimed to investigate the Psychiatric Morbidity in different Healthcare professionals (HCPs) and to observe any changes that occurred in this COVID pandemic situation. Material(s) and Method(s): The present study was a Hospital based Cross-sectional observational study, conducted over 1.5 years at College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital, Kamarhati. 126 HCPs (Consultants, Senior Resident, junior residents, Interns, Nurses, Paramedical Staffs, Non-Clinical staffs) were included in this study. Bengali version of Self Rated Questionnaire (SRQ-24) was used to assess the psychiatric morbidity. Result(s): In our study 61.9% HCPs were having Psychiatric Morbidity and 38.1% were not having Psychiatric morbidity. Among Consultants 30.2% had psychiatric morbidity, among Senior Residents 40%, in Junior Residents 52.9%, among Interns 50%, among Nurse 77.8% and in Non-Clinical Stuffs 69.6% and in Paramedical Stuffs 75% had psychiatric morbidity. Conclusion(s): Healthcare professionals had to do their duty in many adverse situations in COVID pandemic. They had to face tremendous mental and physical pressure and frequently they became exhausted. In spite this they did duty properly and saved millions of lives. So, their mental health should be assessed and proper intervention should be taken.

World's Proposed Safeguard Against COVID-19 - A Brief Review

From December 2019 till now, the coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed the whole world to a new challenge where the survival of human beings faces an alarming phase. The humankind, with utmost intelligence, is trying to find out the key to unlock the lock made by SARSCoV-2, the causative virus of COVID-19. We here, briefly summarize the possible remedies so far introduced worldwide to combat the deadly pathogenic virus. The article includes the information of varieties of drugs applied globally: allopathic, homeopathic, Ayurveda, nanoparticle implicated protections and vaccination trials along with other biotechnical applications in different countries. Our review work may be useful to scientists involved in research in this field to know the global remedial aspects so far developed and also to create awareness among people regarding the present pandemic and preventive mechanisms.Copyright © 2021 Bentham Science Publishers.

India's inward (re)turn: is it warranted? Will it work?

India is turning inward. Domestic demand is assuming primacy over export orientation and trade restrictions are increasing, reversing a 3-decade trend. This shift is based on three misconceptions, which we dispel: that India's domestic market size is big, India's growth has been based on domestic not export markets, and export prospects are dim because the world is deglobalizing. In fact, India still enjoys large export opportunities, especially in labor-intensive sectors such as clothing and footwear. But exploiting these opportunities requires more openness and more global integration. Abandoning export orientation is thus akin to killing the goose that lays golden eggs. Indeed, given constraints on public, corporate and household balance sheets, abandoning export orientation is akin to killing the only goose that can lay eggs. © 2023, The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Editorial Office, Indian Economic Review.

Digital resilience and new business models in the post-COVID-19 scenario: from B2B perspective in the era of knowledge economy

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the pandemic impacted on business-to-business (B2B) cooperation and coordination, as well as on firms' financial and operational performance, from the B2B context in the era of knowledge economy. Design/methodology/approach: With the help of social network theory, coordination theory and existing literature, a theoretical model was developed conceptually. Later, the conceptual model was validated using structural equation modelling technique with consideration of 712 respondents from different firms who are engaged in managing B2B relationships on behalf of their firms. Findings: The study found that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable moderating impact on the relationship between B2B cooperation and coordination with B2B relationship satisfaction. The study also highlighted that there is a degradation of financial and operational performance of firms due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on their B2B relationship management. Practical implications: There is a challenging and ever-evolving global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it is argued that the pandemic has accelerated the growth of some online firms, it has also had a catastrophic effect, culminating in many firms failing. This study has developed a new business model which helps in improving financial as well as operational performance of the firms in post COVID-19 scenario, especially in the era of knowledge economy. Originality/value: This is a unique study as this study (1) develops a unique theoretical model with high explanative power, (2) demonstrates how digital reliance and new business model help the firms in post COVID-19 pandemic and (3) adds to the body of literature in the domain of digital reliance, knowledge economy and B2B relationship management. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Revisiting the resource-based view (RBV) theory: from cross-functional capabilities perspective in post COVID-19 period

Due to ever-changing business context, researchers and academicians revisit established theories to examine their validity underdifferent evolving scenarios. Therefore, this study aims to examine the cross-functional capabilities of the organizations by revisiting the resource-based view (RBV) theory, especially focusing on thepost-COVID-19 period. This study also investigates the moderating role of the organization strategic management ability and itsinfluence on the performance of the organizations. After reviewing existing literature and applying RBV theory, a theoretical model was developed conceptually. Later, the conceptual model was validated using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique with a survey of 342 usable respondents from 21 organizations. The study found thatRBV theory is useful and relevant for explaining organization cross-functional capabilities even in the post-COVID-19 period. We found that cross-functional capabilities have positively impacted overall organization capability, which then positively influences organization performance. The study also found that there is apositive moderating impact of strategic management ability onorganization performance. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Detection of Temporal Shifts in Semantics Using Local Graph Clustering

Many changes in our digital corpus have been brought about by the interplay between rapid advances in digital communication and the current environment characterized by pandemics, political polarization, and social unrest. One such change is the pace with which new words enter the mass vocabulary and the frequency at which meanings, perceptions, and interpretations of existing expressions change. The current state-of-the-art algorithms do not allow for an intuitive and rigorous detection of these changes in word meanings over time. We propose a dynamic graph-theoretic approach to inferring the semantics of words and phrases ("terms”) and detecting temporal shifts. Our approach represents each term as a stochastic time-evolving set of contextual words and is a count-based distributional semantic model in nature. We use local clustering techniques to assess the structural changes in a given word's contextual words. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method by investigating the changes in the semantics of the phrase "Chinavirus”. We conclude that the term took on a much more pejorative meaning when the White House used the term in the second half of March 2020, although the effect appears to have been temporary. We make both the dataset and the code used to generate this paper's results available. © 2023 by the authors.

Global talent management by multinational enterprises post-COVID-19: The role of enterprise social networking and senior leadership

Multinational enterprises' (MNEs') workforce is made up of people from diverse backgrounds and different locations around the globe. The cross-border transfer of knowledge, skills, and best practices among MNE employees is important to maintain global standards and competitiveness. In the post-COVID-19 period, there is a greater need to exchange knowledge in the changing business environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the issues related to MNEs' global talent management, post-COVID-19. The study investigates the use of enterprise social networking applications for better knowledge exchange and tries to understand the moderating role of senior leadership team support in facilitating the usage of enterprise social networks for cross-border collaboration and talent management. After reviewing the literature and relevant theories, we developed a conceptual model, which is then validated using the SEM technique with 347 respondents from 12 MNEs. The study reveals the importance of using enterprise social networks for cross-border knowledge exchange in the post-COVID-19 period. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Digital workplace and organization performance: Moderating role of digital leadership capability

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have permitted their employees to work from anywhere, giving rise to the phenomenon of the digital workplace, which enables employees to do their work by connecting, communicating, and collaborating with other employees. Organizations' dynamic capabilities play a major role in enabling this transformation of the workplace. As the situation is so recent, there is considerable interest amongst researchers, practitioners, academicians, and policymakers to understand the role of organizations' dynamic capability in digital transformation of the workplace, as well as the role of digital leadership in improving organization performance and enabling the digital transformation process to happen. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of digital workplace on organization performance and the moderating role of digital leadership capability in digitally transforming the workplace. We developed a research model from our review of the literature review and dynamic capability view (DCV) theory, and then we validated it using the PLS-SEM technique on a sample of 335 respondents from different types of organizations that have embarked on the digital transformation journey. The study finds that the dynamic capabilities of organizations have a significant and positive influence on the digital transformation of the workplace, which in turn improves the employees' work-life balance resulting better employee performance and superior organization performance. The study also highlights the significant role that digital leadership plays in the digital transformation of the workplace. © 2023 The Authors