Government as a Facilitator versus Inhibitor of Social Entrepreneurship in Times of Public Health Emergencies.

COVID-19 established the need for even more social entrepreneurship globally. It is important for keeping society together in times of crises because it creates an environment that improves the quality of life during hard times and public health emergencies such as COVID-19. Even though it plays a unique role in returning things back to normal after a crisis, it faces opposition from many parts of society, especially the government. Still, there are not many studies that look at what the government should do to help or stop social enterprise during public health emergencies. That is why the goal of this study was to find out how the government has helped or hindered social entrepreneurs. Content analysis was conducted on the carefully mined data from the internet. The research found that regulations for social enterprises should be loosened, especially during and after pandemics and disasters. This could also make it easier to accomplish things in the government. It was also found that, in addition to financial help, capacity building through training can help social enterprises do more and make a bigger difference. This research provides broader guidelines for policymakers and new entrants in the field.

Organizational culture and affective commitment to e-learning' changes during COVID-19 pandemic: The underlying effects of readiness for change.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been embracing digital transformation for years, but the disruptive influence of the global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated it. Despite the importance of organizational culture (OC) for the successful delivery of e-learning, empirical studies looking at its impact on academics' readiness and affective commitment to e-learning-induced changes are scant. This study unveils the underlying impacts of multiple employee readiness for change (ERFC) dimensions in the OC-employee affective commitment to change (EACC) relationship. Survey data were obtained from 1,200 Jordanian public HEIs' academics. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the data, testing the study's six hypotheses. The findings offer a novel contribution by showing that OC types influence different dimensions of ERFC, each having a distinctive impact on EACC. It further shows that two ERFC dimensions, namely self-efficacy and personal valence, function as full mediators in the relationships between group culture/adhocracy culture and EACC.

Social Entrepreneurship Opportunities via Distant Socialization and Social Value Creation

Social entrepreneurs are catalysts for social change on account of social value creation and opportunity identification, thereby improving the quality of life. Their contribution to society is particularly significant in times of crises and pandemics. Hence, the world health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for social entrepreneurship across the globe. Despite social entrepreneurship's relevance in social value creation, the studies regarding opportunity identification in times of social distancing are particularly rare. This constructivist-qualitative research fills the gap by employing the EDraw Mind Map tool to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic in general, and social distancing in particular, have shaped entrepreneurial opportunities for social innovation. The findings from content analysis reveal that ICT-based services and industry 4.0 hold a promising future during and post-COVID-19 scenario. They can facilitate a transformation of the threats of social distancing into distant socialization benefits and demand fulfillment. Furthermore, the study contributes to providing a comprehensive depiction of the myriad of opportunities created by social entrepreneurs worldwide. It also guides aspiring social entrepreneurs to adopt such technologies and aim for social integration to ensure quality mental health, education, employment, and manufacturing services in low-resource and developing countries' contexts, as they are severely impacted by the pandemic.

The impact of carbon pricing, climate financing, and financial literacy on COVID-19 cases: go-for-green healthcare policies.

Climate finance and carbon pricing are regarded as sustainable policy mechanisms for mitigating negative environmental externalities via the development of green financing projects and the imposition of taxes on carbon pollution generation. Financial literacy indicates that it is beneficial to invest in cleaner technology to advance the environmental sustainability goal. The current wave of the COVID-19 epidemic has had a detrimental effect on the world economies' health and income. The pandemic crisis dwarfs previous global financial crises in terms of scope and severity, collapsing global financial markets. The study's primary contribution is constructing a climate funding index (CFI) based on four critical factors: inbound foreign direct investment, renewable energy usage, research and development spending, and carbon damages. In a cross-sectional panel of 43 nations, the research evaluates the effect of climate funding, financial literacy, and carbon pricing in lowering exposure to coronavirus cases. The study utilized Newton-Raphson and Marquardt steps to estimate the current parameter estimates while evaluating the COVID-19 prediction model with level regressors using the robust least squares regression model (S-estimator). Additionally, the innovation accounting matrix predicts estimations over a specific period. The findings indicate that climate finance significantly reduces coronavirus exposure by introducing green financing initiatives that benefit human health, which eventually strengthens the immune system's ability to fight infectious illnesses. Financial literacy and carbon pricing, on the other hand, are ineffectual in controlling coronavirus infections due to rising economic activity and densely inhabited areas that enable the transmission of coronavirus cases across countries. Similar findings were obtained using the alternative regression apparatus. The COVID-19 predicted variable was used as a "response variable," and climate financing was shown to have a favorable impact on containing coronavirus exposure. As shown by the innovation accounting matrix, carbon pricing would drastically decrease coronavirus cases' exposure over a time horizon. The study concludes that climate finance and carbon pricing were critical in improving air quality indicators, which improved countries' health and wealth, allowing them to reduce coronavirus infections via sustainable healthcare reforms.

Destructive Role of COVID-19 Fear on Nurses Performance: Mediating Role of Stress.

Given its importance to psychological issues, the COVID-19 pandemic has created numerous challenges for all individuals, but healthcare professionals and particularly nursing staff are at front lines, and their performance is significantly affected. The current study relates COVID-19 fear with psychological strain, i.e., stress amongst the nursing staff. Moreover, the intervening role of COVID-19 stress between COVID-19 fear and the performance of the nursing staff has also been tested. An online survey was conducted to collect data from nurses. A total of 471 responses of nurses were received during the process of online data collection from 16 November 2020 to 30 April 2021. Results revealed the significant effect of COVID-19 fear on COVID-19 stress and the performance of nurses. Additionally, the results substantiate that COVID-19 stress mediates between COVID-19 fear and the health care performance of nurses. COVID-19 fear has become a psychological consequence that increases stress among nursing staffs. This study fills the research gap about the performance of the health care sectors, particularly with respect to COVID-19 fear and COVID-19 stress among nurses. Hence, COVID-19 fear plays a significant role in COVID-19 stress in terms of influencing the health care performance of nurses. Overall, the results give pragmatic insights for the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assessing Hybrid Solar-Wind Potential for Industrial Decarbonization Strategies: Global Shift to Green Development

The global energy mix is shifting from fossil fuels to combinations of multiple energy storage and generation types. Hybrid energy system advancements provide opportunities for developing and deploying innovative green technology solutions that can further reduce emissions and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This study examined the impact of an increasing share of wind and solar electricity production on reducing carbon intensity by controlling coal and lignite domestic consumption and the production of refined oil products in a world aggregated data panel. Data covering the last three decades were used for the analysis by the ARDL bounds testing approach. The results showed that an increasing share of wind and solar electricity production would be helpful to decrease carbon intensity in the short and long term. On the other hand, a 1% increase in coal and domestic lignite consumption increased carbon intensity by 0.343% in the short run and 0.174% in the long run. The production of refined oil products decreases carbon intensity by 0.510% in the short run and 0.700% in the long run. However, refining oil products is associated with positive and negative environmental externalities. The positive aspect depends upon the removal of harmful pollutants and the production of cleaner-burning fuels, while the negative part is related to the operational side of refineries and processing plants that may release contaminants into the atmosphere, affecting global air and water quality. Hence, it is crucial to improve processing and refining capacity to produce better-refined oil products by using renewable fuels in energy production. It is proposed that these are the most cost-effective pathways to achieve industrial decarbonization.

Do environmental pollutants carrier to COVID-19 pandemic? A cross-sectional analysis.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly transmitted disease that spreads all over the globe in a short period. Environmental pollutants are considered one of the carriers to spread the COVID-19 pandemic through health damages. Carbon emissions, PM2.5 emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, GHG, and other GHG emissions are mainly judged separately in the earlier studies in different economic settings. The study hypothesizes that environmental pollutants adversely affect healthcare outcomes, likely to infected people by contagious diseases, including coronavirus cases. The subject matter is vital to analyze the preventive healthcare theory by using different environmental pollutants on the COVID-19 factors: total infected cases, total death cases, and case fatality ratio, in a large cross-section of 119 countries. The study employed the generalized least square (GLS) method for robust inferences. The results show that GHG and CO2 emissions are critical factors likely to increase total coronavirus cases and death rates. On the other hand, nitrous oxide, carbon, and transport emissions increase the case fatality ratio through healthcare damages. The study concludes that stringent environmental policies and improving healthcare infrastructure can control coronavirus cases across countries.