ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has massively hit the whole world in many different aspects of life including the delivery of embedded industrial seminar (EIS), which is one of the significantly important academic activities in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) higher institutions. EIS, which was previously conducted on a face-to-face (F2F) basis has been urged to undergo a transition to the online alternative. It is therefore a great interest in conducting a preliminary study to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on this transition, based on the undergraduate students' perception. The survey was conducted on 129 respondents who have participated in an online EIS organized by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), through a set of questionairres on an online form. Besides revealing a high degree of agreement on the direct impact of COVID-19 on the EIS implementation, the results also possess significant potential for the online EIS to equally replace the F2F implementation in the future. © 2023 Author(s).
ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the role of technology on the organizational performance of SMEs in Islamabad, Pakistan during the ravages of Covid 19 pandemic. It has been widely accepted that the proper adoption of digitalization not only helpful to cushion the impact of the said pandemic but it also aids SMEs to stay afloat and gains profits. SMEs need to equip themselves with up-to-date technology to weather adversaries in their business. Compare to other developing countries, Pakistani SMEs still far behind in leveraging digitalization. There is a dire need for them to practice and embrace digitalization in entrepreneurship to improve their performances. The present study will find out the effects of technology on the organizational performance of SMEs in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan and float a conceptual model. A conceptual framework, which was derived from the OECD, will facilitate the investigation. Realising the data in paramount important and urgently needed, the nature of this study will be a cross-sectional and quantitative. The key technologies including digitalization will be employed as predictors and organizational performance will be regressed as predicted variable. The findings of this study would be instructive, demanding SMEs and other related stakeholders to make a concerted effort to plan and executive viable strategies to ensure SMEs which provided the largest employability in Pakistan can successfully embrace technologies to ensure the highest level of their performance. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.