The effects of the 2020–2021 Coronavirus pandemic change-event on football refereeing: evidence from the Israeli and Portuguese leagues

Upon the emergence of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic (CP), football referees were forced to cope with the interruption of leagues and experience quarantines, with a potential threat to their physical and psychological well-being. This study examined referees' perceptions of the CP change-event, particularly the effects on refereeing engagement and performance, in part to facilitate more effective support. For this study, an online inventory was circulated during January–February 2021 to 198 referees and assistants from Israel and Portugal, asking them to reflect on the CP in the context of their careers, and the potential effects on their refereeing engagement and performance. The results indicated that the CP was perceived as a moderate change-event in terms of significance, severity, and coping, although many participants did consider it as significant. The participants indicated just a minor reduction in their refereeing quality between the 2019–2020 and the 2020–2021 seasons. The main areas affected were training on a grass field, decision-making training, and financial status. Still, refereeing instruction (conducted mainly online) improved. The behavioural effects were more forceful among the non-professional referees, suggesting that Referee Associations must pay closer attention to support these populations. The participants' motivation, refereeing identity, and self-efficacy were actually improved. Finally, the absence of the crowd in matches allowed the referees to be more aware of their actions and better communicate with players and coaches, which related to better performance. These findings further emphasize the social aspect of football refereeing and the importance of having upright management and communication skills. © 2022 International Society of Sport Psychology.

Personality Characteristics as Predictors of the Leader's Ethical Leadership in Regular Times and in Times of Crisis

Personality traits broadly impact people's behavior and decisions in the organizational realm. One of the leading personality models suggests that people's personalities can be expressed by five dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, pleasantness, extroversion, and neuroticism. While these characteristics are stable in most human lives, they are assumed to be more pronounced in times of crisis, since crises are weak situations. According to the situational strength theory, people are less aware of the desired rules and codes of conduct in weak situations. Thus, they tend to rely more on their traits and less on the existing procedures. The current work aimed to examine if, during a crisis, the personal characteristics of the manager will be more pronounced and thus have a larger influence on their ethical leadership. In three studies, we show a strong link between agreeableness and conscientiousness and the ethical leadership of managers. However, contrary to our hypotheses, the link between personality traits and ethical leadership is stronger in regular times and not during a crisis. Our findings emphasize the importance of characterizing managers' personality traits for organizations' sustainability. Second, they highlight how significant is the relationship between managers and their employees.

Pandemics and epidemics in historical perspective: an introduction

This article discusses major issues and challenges faced by historians in analyzing epidemics and pandemics. It addresses the importance of Brazilian and Latin American historical production in understanding epidemics as global phenomena and outlines their current trends. It then discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a growing interest in historical analysis of past epidemics, and concludes by presenting the articles in the dossier. © 2021 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. All right reserved.