A Configuration Approach to Reduce the Risk of COVID-19 Employees Infection in the Manufacturing Firms: The Role of Machine Automatization

Does automation adoption mitigate the COVID-19 infection rate of employees? What resources and internal and external factors need to be configured with automation to mitigate COVID-19 contagion from employees successfully? According to the type of automation. What resources efficiently complement to mitigate the contagion rate from employers? From a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach, we analyzed 759 manufacturing firms in Finland, drawn from the World Bank 2020 Enterprise Survey;this study addresses the multiple configurations that drive pandemic risk mitigation and management. We find that configurations under automation reduce the risk of employee infection. Our results show the critical role of automation in employee safety. We argue that access to government support and the development of technological innovation are necessary conditions for implementing measures to prevent and mitigate the risk of contagion in the employee. In addition, the first configuration states that manufacturing firms employing soft automation can successfully mitigate employee exposure. The second configuration states that high human resource flexibility successfully complements firms with complex automation to achieve high mitigation. Finally, the third configuration shows those manufacturing firms that employ low-tech automation (manual processes);in this manner, digitization enables successfully mitigating pandemic contagion. Moreover, it suggests recommendations for policymakers and managers. © 2022,International Journal of Technology. All Rights Reserved.

New Strategies to Explain Organizational Resilience on the Firms: A Cross-Countries Configurations Approach

Organizations need to develop their resilience to foster future success to survive complex environments. This research conducts a comparative analysis to understand firms’ strategies in a “black swan” event. We use the “strategy tripod” to operationalize resilience theory and explain the configurations or pathways that lead to high organizational resilience in a crisis context. The data correspond to 1936 firms drawn from the “Enterprise Survey 2020 for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China (ESIEC)”, and to 66 Central American firms drawn from the “World Bank 2020 Enterprise Surveys” are also analyzed. The methodological approach fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is applied. We discuss and analyze the strategies of companies in this “new normal”;our results establish that in the case of emerging economies, organizational innovation seems to be a necessary condition for becoming an organizational resilience to a black swan crisis (finding from both cases). We also found that labor flexibility and emotional intelligence for the case of firms from China, and adequate control of the turbulence environment for the cases of Central America, were also necessary conditions for each region. We further argue that digitalization depends on access to government support for its success. China reinforces its strategies in an intensification of human resources flexibility. In addition, they are better prepared for the “black swan” crisis, allowing them to adapt quickly and generate business model innovation to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in this “new normal”. In contrast, Central America needs rapid organization for organizational resilience. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

LOW-COST METHODOLOGY FOR THE FOLLOW-UP AND MONITORING OF MUSCLE RECOVERY, BASED ON VIDEO GAME TECHNIQUES, APPLIED TO CHILDREN, IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC CAUSED BY COVID-19

At present, information and communication technologies are achieving notable importance in all actions of people, from education, work and with greater emphasis on health. It is in this area of knowledge that many applications arise based on the use of hardware and software that try to help medical diagnosis, in this work we use the video game console “Nintendo Switch” to interact with the child, so that children They can play the games and at the same time be able to perform the rehabilitation exercises, depending on the muscles to be recovered, in our case it is evaluated to recover the mobility of the “elbow” and the muscles that interact with it, in a normal situation, children have complications in performing rehabilitation exercises in health centers, this refusal to perform the exercises may be due to fear or even more so, the environment itself does not allow them to feel confident. The results allowed us to show that children can perform rehabilitation exercises at home using the Nintendo Switch console, for the verification of the methodology, it was possible to configure the console with wireless controls so that children can interact with the game “Just Dance”, where children try to perform the same movements that are presented in the video game, with the help of the surface electromyography circuit, the muscle activity linked to the signals can be recorded. We can indicate that the methodology presented allows the use of a device that children feel more comfortable and identified for complex tasks such as the issue of recovery of elbow mobility, it can also be possible to record each movement with its respective muscle activity, for analysis later by the doctor of the specialty of Physical Therapy and rehabilitation. © 2020 All Rights Reserved