ABSTRACT
The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of livelihood, but the higher education sector was hit hardest. The pandemic has exposed the inequalities that still exist in the South African Higher Education sector concerning resources. All universities were expected to shift from traditional face-to-face classes to virtual teaching and learning. Consequently, lecturers were expected to establish WhatsApp (WA) groups in different academic programmes in the institution to communicate course information. The aim of the chapter is to examine how WhatsApp groups can be used by the students to maintain and assert their academic identity as members of a group. This chapter draws from the concept of a discourse community as a sense of belonging and utilising communication to share objectives or goals. The chapter employs a qualitative research technique by drawing from the participatory action research (PAR). © 2023, IGI Global. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many businesses but has especially impacted small businesses (Dua et al. 2020, Eggers 2020). In the early months of the pandemic, many small business owners did not have the financial ability to sustain their services due to lacking funds during the shut-down (Bartik et al. 2020). This has significant long-term effects on the global economy as small-to-medium size businesses comprise 90% of all global businesses and 55% of GDP (Salesforce 2019). The demise of small businesses could have incomprehensible long term impacts on the global economy. As a result, it is not surprising that many scholars are calling for more research to understand how businesses can continue their services during the global pandemic (e.g., Batat 2020;Heinonen and Strandvik 2020;Sajtos et al. 2020). Although past research has investigated crisis management from a marketing perspective, little research has explored how small businesses are able to continue services in a crisis of this extent. Past research recognizes that business model innovation can offer new profitable opportunities and/or provide a shield against dynamic environmental changes (McDonald et al. 2019;Teece 2018), but less work has explored how small businesses can attain business innovation models in the challenge of a significant crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, we explore the following research question: What can enable small businesses’ business model innovation during a crisis? To investigate this research question, we take an inductive, qualitative approach. Using qualitative interviews with 10 industry-diverse small business owners and 5 small business resource providers, the data reveals there are multiple paths to pursuing their interests in sustaining business. Specifically, we identify that through a cocreative process, small businesses rely on technology and intermediary organizations to foster new forms of pursuing business, specifically engaging in business model innovation (BMI). This research answers calls for research inquiring how businesses, and specifically small businesses, are able to help others cope with the crisis and support the economy (Pantano et al. 2020). © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Digital contact tracing (DCT) applications, as a type of location-based application, have been employed in many countries to help mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, the emergence of DCTs has amplified concerns over privacy issues as consumers are confronted with the ethical dilemma that arises regarding serving public and private interests. In other words, to what extent are consumers willing to negotiate their privacy concerns to gain perceived social benefits? Drawing on Social Exchange Theory as the theoretical lens to examine interpersonal relations between the government and consumers, this study investigates the extent to which consumers' perceived social benefits (e.g., reciprocity, trust, and reputation) mediate the relationship between privacy concerns and the intention to use DCT applications. Based on 269 usable responses, the results revealed that government trust was insignificant in mediating the relationship between privacy concerns and intention to use the DCT application. Rather, the expected reciprocal benefits and reputation enhancement were found to have significant mediating effects. Perceived government regulation was also found to moderate the relationship between privacy concerns and government trust. The paper concludes with suggestions for practitioners and policymakers on the plausible strategies to encourage the adoption of DCT applications. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.