ABSTRACT
According to the significant impacts of social media and the internet on all facets of our lives in general and the business world in particular, many business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their clientele or start their own ventures have moved to the virtual world, particularly when they want to advance their careers. For the reasons mentioned above, this article aims to ascertain how social media networks impact business operations, with a focus on how they affect entrepreneurship growth. Facebook and Instagram are the two most useful social media platforms. The findings indicate that Facebook and Instagram have a significant impact on increasing entrepreneurship and household income in Jordan. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Studies on the application of service-learning with an emphasis on heritage learners are still emerging. Using a critical service-learning approach, I describe how the integration of a service-learning project showed heritage learners of Spanish the need for people with their bilingual abilities. Specifically, I examine the impact of service-learning and critical language pedagogies on students' perception and appreciation (or lack thereof) of their linguistic abilities. A qualitative analysis of self-reported answers to a biographical questionnaire and a final guided reflection, revealed that heritage learners not only gained confidence in their linguistic skills but also advanced their knowledge of the language and cultures while challenging and disrupting inequities that exist in a Latinx community. This study contributes to an emerging literature on the application of critical service-learning approaches to service-learning in heritage language learners' courses by showing the benefits and challenges of incorporating a project that sought mutual benefits for all stakeholders involved. It also contributes to documenting ways to create access to service-learning during the pandemic and how service-learning projects can be incorporated in courses offered virtually only. AATSP Copyright © 2023.
ABSTRACT
The impacts of COVID-19 are expected to shutter business performance globally. Though, very little early evidence on the impacts is recorded currently. Small business owners are expected to be hugely impacted compared to larger business counterparts. This is a result of limitations in financial capabilities, skills, and human resources. Small and Mid-size Enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in the resilience and sustainability of economic growth globally. An early-stage loss to business activity as a result of COVID-19 has significant implications for future economic inequality, income losses, and policy. This has triggered research into sustainability measures suitable for business maturity and to improve operational performance. Research is addressing issues ranging from developing a digital platform suitable for the collection of systems and automating its processes. This study complements publications that develop a technological and digital landscape by further expatiating on digital transformation issues and smart operational implementations in the context of SMEs. This study initiates by systematically identifying relevant contemporary publications on SME digitalization using the Scopus database. The documents are then reviewed by focusing on the crucial factors and current systems that influence the process of digital transformations for SMEs. The results facilitate sustainable business value and are crucial as a reference document that guides SMEs for future smart operational implementations. Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2022.
ABSTRACT
Technostress is an important by-product of information and communication technologies (ICT). The technostress literature suggests focusing on specific dimensions of technostress, such as techno-overload, which describes when ICT usage demands to work faster and longer. However, only a few studies have dealt with the technostress of small business owners, let alone techno-overload. This is surprising since work overload in general has been identified as an important dimension of job stress for small business owners, and technostress has been identified as an important impediment for workers in general. The aim of the current study is to investigate the effect of techno-overload on well-being outcomes (as a composite measure consisting of physical well-being, mental well-being, sleep quality, burnout, and loneliness) using three data sets of French small business owners. Our results indicate a strong negative correlation between techno-overload and our composite measure of well-being for all three data sets. We interpret our findings for several different disciplines: information systems, small business owners and entrepreneurship, health and well-being, psychology and organization studies. Our data also allow for the identification of contextual effects–the COVID-19 pandemic–since one survey was conducted before, one at the start of, and one during the pandemic. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic could be considered as a career shock for employees in different industries around the world. The aim of this research was to gain insight into the dynamics of Serbian small business owners' career shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by using personal construct psychology (PCP) as a theoretical framework. We conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with 9 small business owners on two separate occasions and analyzed their personal stories. The data were collected during the most restrictive lockdown in Serbia in April 2020 and again at the end of June 2020 when the number of the people infected was on a rapid rise. The reaction to the career shock caused by the pandemic can be understood by analyzing transitions (how people perceive career shocks), people's coping strategies and the way in which their dependencies were dispersed. This study contributes to understanding the career shock issue by viewing it through the lens of the personal construct theory. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
ABSTRACT
We analyze a large-scale survey of small business owners, managers, and employees in the United States to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on those businesses. We explore two waves of the survey that were fielded on Facebook in April 2020 and December 2020. We document five facts about the impact of the pandemic on small businesses. (1) Larger firms, older firms, and male-owned firms were more likely to remain open during the early stages of the pandemic with many of these heterogeneities persisting through the end of 2020. (2) At businesses that remained open, concerns about demand shocks outweighed concerns about supply shocks though the relative importance of supply shocks grew over time. (3) In response to the pandemic, almost a quarter of the firms reduced their prices with price reductions concentrated among businesses facing financial constraints and demand shocks;almost no firms raised prices. (4) Only a quarter of small businesses had access to formal sources of financing at the start of the pandemic, and access to formal financing affected how firms responded to the pandemic. (5) Increased household responsibilities affected the ability of managers and employees to focus on their work, whereas increased business responsibilities impacted their ability to take care of their household members. This effect persisted through December 2020 and was particularly strong for women and parents of school-aged children. We discuss how these facts inform our understanding of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they can help design policy responses to similar shocks. © 2022 INFORMS.
ABSTRACT
The state has taken center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic in unanticipated ways. Rescuing private companies with public money exemplifies this, highlighting substantial state interventionism amidst a fairly dominant discourse of our times: that of the "neoliberal state." In this article, we focus on how owners of micro-businesses in Croatia constructed state practices during the COVID-19 pandemic and how interactions with the state prior to the pandemic contributed to these constructions. We reflect on the state as a historically embedded social relation that is understood, experienced, and felt. Drawing on interviews, we develop three themes that illustrate the layered and wrought relationship between business owners and the state, as they understand it to "exist"-state-mediated constructions of business owners: tycoons and heroes; frustrating state practices; contradictory images-the benevolent state. The pervasiveness of the state is reflected in how the post-socialist state has shaped professional identities in the business sector, in the overwhelmingly negative emotional landscape state practices seem to propel, but also in hints of state benevolence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The identified nexus of emotions in relation to state practices-exasperation, disappointment, indignation, gratitude-and their historical embeddedness are a strong indication of how present-day constructions of the state are an expression of "accumulated history." Based on their experiences with state practices, our interlocutors construct the state as corrupt, incompetent, inefficient, uncaring, coercive, only on occasion benevolent, and in a highly affective register as "unnecessary," while also expressing a desire for a state that "cares," particularly in disaster settings.
ABSTRACT
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have faced unprecedented challenges when trying to remain open. Because COVID-19 spreads through aerosolized droplets, businesses were forced to distance their services;in some cases, distancing may have involved moving business services online. In this work, we explore digitization strategies used by small businesses that remained open during the pandemic, and survey/interview small businesses owners to understand preliminary challenges associated with moving online. Furthermore, we analyze payments from 400K businesses across Japan, Australia, United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Following initial government interventions, we observe (at minimum for each country) a 47% increase in digitizing businesses compared to pre-pandemic levels, with about 80% of surveyed businesses digitizing in under a week. From both our quantitative models and our surveys/interviews, we find that businesses rapidly digitized at the start of the pandemic in preparation of future uncertainty. We also conduct a case-study of initial digitization in the United States, examining finer relationships between specific government interventions, business sectors, political orientation, and resulting digitization shifts. Finally, we discuss the implications of rapid & widespread digitization for small businesses in the context of usability challenges and interpersonal interactions, while highlighting potential shifts in pre-existing social norms. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to look at small business owners' entrepreneurial resilience and mental well-being during adversity. This paper tries to gauge the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on an entrepreneur's mental wellness and how being resilient in their approach to handling uncertainties mediates and positively envisages their mental wellness. The quantitative approach was utilized to collect data and achieve the specified goal. The information was gathered from 159 small business owners in Varanasi, India. The partial least squares method was used to analyze the collected data. Future research should look for more accurate ways to measure resilience as well as personal traits that could be used to further analyze the person–entrepreneurial context fit. In order to improve the generalizability of the study's findings, researchers can also consider perceived adversity and resilience as mediating factors, in addition to the actual adversity and resilience assessed in this study. © 2022 Fortune Institute of International Business.
ABSTRACT
Closed-circuit television camera (CCTV) and thermal imaging devices are used to detect febrile individuals entering establishments for Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) containment. Real-time tracking in post-COVID is manually checked by security personnel, which has risks of less efficiency due to human errors, as advance thermal cameras are unaffordable for some business owners. The main goal is converting an installed CCTV interfaced with infrared sensor to develop an economical thermal screening system with acoustic alarm. In this project, the colored and heatmap images transmitted from the thermal camera were processed through OpenCV. A calibration method was also performed to validate the temperature reading from the thermal camera. The project comes with graphical user interface (GUI) connected into a database, which visually tracks individuals exhibits elevated body temperature. The performance of the system shows above 95% accuracy upon conducting an inexpensive calibration check. The significance of this project is highlighting the effective mitigation of virus spread which offers safe and contactless analysis of potential individuals showing early symptoms of COVID-19. Additional features can be added for future work such as facemask detector, multiple thermal camera setup, and Login Options making the device and application exclusively for business owners. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
E-commerce plays an important and prominent role in the modern era, especially with the continued emergence of new technologies, which opened new horizons for entrepreneurs and business owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to pursue business growth. Currently, SMEs are no longer limited to practicing their business activities locally but internationally. Digitalization has a vital role in elevating the state of competitiveness between firms, which prompts many SMEs to acquire technologies that facilitate the business transition to e-commerce considering gaining a competitive advantage over their rivals and maintaining relevance in their field. This research will further explore the different challenges SMEs faced in Bahrain during the Covid-19 period and analyze the various obstacles faced during e-commerce adaptation. The analysis considers three main categories: organizational Readiness, environmental Readiness, and technological Readiness. This study aims to demonstrate SMEs' willingness to transition their business activities to e-commerce after the devastating repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. A questionnaire was designed and shared with 110 employees working at SMEs, and 100 responses were received and selected to be the research sample size. The research revealed that SMEs in Bahrain faced many obstacles to transform into e-commerce businesses during the pandemic and among the challenges were the financial cost of such transformation. The study provided further recommendations for future studies. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The situation we are facing right now because of the COVID-19 virus is rapidly changing and gives a noticeable impact. Everything has become an online-based activity, which leads to the increasing number of internet and social media users. On the other hand, business owners need to find new ways to survive in the new normal situation. With that in mind, business owners can take advantage of the internet and social media as a marketplace. Social media is a perfect fit for an O2O (Online-to-Offline or Offline-to-Online) implementation. O2O method strategy is designed to educate more than half of online customers of the product's information. The purpose of this study is to analyze the O2O channel via social media as a marketing place. This research uses the quantitative method and snowball sampling method. The result of this study shows that 98.7% of Generation Z have already shopped online before and are using social media to seek information about product's information. The result of this study can be used to help the business owners to determine the right strategy for their business, either implementing Online-to-Offline or Offline-to-Online business model in this pandemic situation. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
A massive home-quarantine took place in China due to the novel coronavirus in the end of 2019. The purpose of the present study was to explore the potential mental health impact of this forced quarantine and widespread shutdown among small business owners and the self-employed. A semi-structured interview was employed among 14 participants from three different cities in China. Grounded Theory was employed to analyze the data using Nvivo11 plus. Based on a qualitative analysis, 9 categories of responses emerged to describe the experience and actions of participants towards the quarantine: enjoyment of life, emotional disturbance, hope, comparisons to others, social support, patriotism, making changes, and obedience. Further analysis suggested that the mental state of participants was either positive or negative depending on enjoyment of life, loss, emotional disturbance, and hope, and that these were impacted by intervening conditions (national measures, social support, patriotism), personal strategies (exercising, studying, comparisons to others), and personal consequences (making change, obedience). Rather than observing a linear pattern of negative outcomes, mental state was found to be variable in that positive outcomes were experienced earlier in the quarantine (making connections with family), negative states were encountered midway through the quarantine (fear of financial loss, anxiety), and more positive mental states (hope) emerged towards the end of the quarantine depending on intervening conditions, personal strategies, and consequences. It can be concluded that the nature of the impact of mandatory quarantine in China among small business owners and the self-employed is complex and depends on a variety of personal and situational factors.