Work-life balance satisfaction in crisis times: from luxury to necessity – The role of organization's responses during COVID-19 lockdown

PurposeThis study examines how satisfaction with work-life balance (WLB) in combination with satisfaction with organization's COVID-19 responses (SOCV19R) helps to enhance subjective well-being and performance during the lockdown due to COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThe data of this time-lagged study were gathered through an online survey with three-waves between March and May 2020 in Spain (N = 167). Hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsDirect relationships between SOCV19R and subjective well-being and performance were not significant. Instead, SOCV19R increased employees' well-being and performance through a higher satisfaction with WLB (full mediation).Originality/valueThe novelty of this study is the evaluation of SOCV19R as a form of organizational support in times of crisis. This study suggests that a good organizational reaction to face a crisis such as the pandemic, encourages employees' WLB and helps them to boost their well-being and performance. It may be concluded that work-life balance (WLB) in Spain was seen as a luxury in good times and turned out to be a necessity in bad times. The present study recommends practical implications and provides lessons for human resource management for future crises or similar work conditions.

Targeted reflection, mutual understanding, and collaborative working. Building blocks for post-pandemic models in higher education

This introduction to the COVID-19 Special Section highlights the importance for targeted reflection on pandemic experiences, mutual understanding of perspectives and best practice sharing by and across stakeholder groups. Higher education, similar to other global sectors, has been profoundly shaken by the realities brought about since March 2020, and different stakeholders have felt the impact and consequences of the pandemic on a daily basis. Reports of challenges go a long way towards enabling understanding;however, unless these are combined with demonstrations of responses in context and analyses of their effectiveness, they remain at the level of awareness and cannot move towards action. Sharing the lessons learned, alerting to specificities and gaining perspectives have never been more timely, as higher education shapes future models for enhanced stakeholder experiences within increased quality parameters. Notwithstanding the disruptive effect on societies, COVID-19 must also be recognised as an accelerator for higher education, impacting digitalisation, accessibility and creating opportunities for new approaches to educational delivery and collaboration. The papers in this Special Section cover a variety of contexts, moving swiftly from Spain to Poland to the United States of America, India and Iran to return to Europe, i.e. Slovenia. Authors tackle specific challenges experienced by stakeholders, be they students, teaching and administrative staff, researchers or policy makers, and discuss lessons learned, highlight perceived benefits and recommend how these may be translated into policy and practice.

Strategic management theory in a post-pandemic and non-ergodic world

This quote, written 30 years ago, describes the pandemic environment in which the world exists today. As Meyer et al. explained, such quantum discontinuous changes require entrepreneurial responses. In the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, firms must devise strategies to deal with short-term discontinuities and significant uncertainty to survive. After the pandemic eases, longer-term strategic changes may be needed to navigate the competitive landscape arising in the 'New Normal' which has resulted from technological, socio-political, and institutional changes that resemble the causes of environmental jolts explained by Meyer et al. This New Normal is unlikely to be a static equilibrium, because the pandemic shock has triggered another unexpected dynamic. As Nobel Laureate Douglass North explained, we now exist in a non-ergodic world in which the new equilibrium after major disruptions continues to change thereafter, similar to dynamic equilibria in open systems. Thus, firms need new and more flexible strategies to achieve what North described as adaptive efficiency. While it is unclear which changes caused by the pandemic will persist, it seems evident that certain aspects of the business environment will change with the current crisis serving as a tipping point. Hence, this new environment (during the pandemic and thereafter) begs the question 'How does strategic management theory help us understand how firms can navigate the New Normal?'. We examine two main strategic management theories prominent in the field for the last three decades - resource-based theory and agency theory - in light of the opportunities and challenges likely to emerge in the non-ergodic New Normal environment, and comment on implications for strategic management more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

COVID-19 Special Section: Introduction Targeted reflection, mutual understanding, and collaborative working. Building blocks for post-pandemic models in higher education

This introduction to the COVID-19 Special Section highlights the importance for targeted reflection on pandemic experiences, mutual understanding of perspectives and best practice sharing by and across stakeholder groups. Higher education, similar to other global sectors, has been profoundly shaken by the realities brought about since March 2020, and different stakeholders have felt the impact and consequences of the pandemic on a daily basis. Reports of challenges go a long way towards enabling understanding;however, unless these are combined with demonstrations of responses in context and analyses of their effectiveness, they remain at the level of awareness and cannot move towards action. Sharing the lessons learned, alerting to specificities and gaining perspectives have never been more timely, as higher education shapes future models for enhanced stakeholder experiences within increased quality parameters. Notwithstanding the disruptive effect on societies, COVID-19 must also be recognised as an accelerator for higher education, impacting digitalisation, accessibility and creating opportunities for new approaches to educational delivery and collaboration. The papers in this Special Section cover a variety of contexts, moving swiftly from Spain to Poland to the United States of America, India and Iran to return to Europe, i.e. Slovenia. Authors tackle specific challenges experienced by stakeholders, be they students, teaching and administrative staff, researchers or policy makers, and discuss lessons learned, highlight perceived benefits and recommend how these may be translated into policy and practice. © 2022 University of Deusto. All rights reserved.

Pandemic policing and the construction of publics: an analysis of COVID-19 lockdowns in public housing.

COVID-19 responses have cast a spotlight on the uneven impacts of public health policy with particular populations or sites targeted for intervention. Perhaps the starkest example in Australia was the 'hard' lockdown of nine public housing complexes in inner-city Melbourne from 4 to 18 July 2020, where residents were fully confined to their homes. These complexes are home to diverse migrant communities and the lockdown drew public criticism for unfairly stigmatising ethnic minorities. This article draws on media articles published during the lockdown and the Victorian Ombudsman's subsequent investigation to explore the implications of broad, top-down public health measures for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Drawing on Lea's (2020) conceptualisation of policy ecology, we analyse the lockdown measures and community responses to explore the normative assumptions underpinning health policy mechanisms, constituting 'target populations' in narrow, exclusionary terms. We argue that the lockdown measures and use of police as compliance officers positioned tower residents as risky subjects in risky places. Tracing how such subject positions are produced, and resisted at the grassroots level, we highlight how policy instruments are not neutral interventions, but rather instantiate classed and racialised patterns of exclusion, reinforcing pervasive social inequalities in the name of public health.

How Did the Mental Health Care System in India Respond to COVID 19 Pandemic?

India with a population of 1.3 billion has a unique health care system in its different states. Mental health care varies widely across the country and this became even more apparent after the COVID-19 pandemic set in. This paper examines the various strategies in response to COVID-19 adopted by the Government of India, the health departments of the individual states, and other private players such as on-government organizations and the civil society. The cessation of many services including outpatient and inpatient care and the scarcity of medicines were serious impacts of COVID-19. The prolonged lockdown in many parts of the country impeded access to mental health care services since public transport was unavailable. This led to many relapses in persons with serious mental disorders. The emergence of new cases of psychosis and an increase in suicides were also seen. Tele consultations came to the fore and many helplines were started offering counseling and guidance regarding the availability of mental health care facilities. While these helped the urban dwellers, those in remote and rural areas were unable to use these services effectively. Many mental health wards were used for COVID-19 patients and mental health professionals were deployed for COVID-19 related duty. The severely mentally ill, the homeless mentally ill, and the elderly were especially vulnerable. Based on our experience with COVID-19, we urge a strong call for action, in terms of strengthening the primary care facilities and increasing the manpower resources to deliver mental health care.

Comparing COVID-19 in the antipodes: Insights from pandemic containment strategies on both sides of the Pacific.

That the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in terms of its scale, spread and shocks can be evinced by the myriad of ever-changing responses cities all around the world have rolled out throughout the different waves of outbreaks. Although the threat is similar across the world, it took some time before its reach became global and the waves of outbreak are experienced by cities at different times. While this staggered spread imply that some cities might manage the virus better as they learn from the experiences of cities which had been amongst the earliest to face the virus, the reality is more complicated. In the early stages of the pandemic, the global consensus on the best way to contain the virus swiftly converged in the interlinked strategies of restricting the movement of people and minimizing their social contact. However, the effectiveness of these strategies differ greatly between cities. To that end, this study focuses on COVID-19 responses in two regions (Latin America and Southeast Asia) and examines the evolution of the first wave of COVID-19 outbreaks during 2020 in Singapore, Jakarta (Indonesia), Bogotá (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile). The study is based on a comparative approach and uses a variety of data sources, namely morphology, density, housing concentration, mobility, and governance in the four analyzed cities. The goal is to shed light on the response of city governments in these two different regions in terms of mobility restrictions in order to reduce the cases of new infections. The results show the relevance of urban policies and their territorial approaches, particularly in terms of mobility and public transport networks in the four cities.

Behavior, social and economic impact of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals: Development and validation of COVID-19 Responses Impact Questionnaire (COVRiQ).

As the world goes through the fourth wave and the continued emergence of new COVID-19 variants, the general and work-related risks of healthcare professionals are expected to rise. This has the capacity to adversely affect productivity and efficiency in the healthcare delivery system, particularly in this era of global shortage of trained healthcare professionals. We aimed to develop and validate a new instrument known as the COVID-19 Responses Impact Questionnaire (COVRiQ) to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare professionals managing the COVID-19 pandemic. This methodological study involved three steps: the formulation of the COVRiQ draft, content and face validation, and construct validity. A total of 61 questions were drafted with 3-point Likert scale answers. From the list, 39 were rated valid by a panel of experts and subsequently tested on 301 participants. The results were analyzed and validated using exploratory factor analysis on SPSS. Components were extracted and questions with low factor loading were removed. The internal consistency was measured with Cronbach's alpha. Following analysis, three components were extracted and named as behavioral, social, and economic impacts. In general, 29 items were deleted leaving 32 out of 61 questions retained as the final validated COVRiQ. Internal consistency showed high reliability with Cronbach's alpha of 0.91. Participants scored a total cumulative mean of 118.74 marks. A subanalysis by occupation showed that medical assistants scored the lowest in the group with a score of 22.3% whereas medical specialists scored the highest at 77.7%. Higher score indicates higher impact of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals. The new COVRiQ consisting of 32 items demonstrated to be user friendly with good psychometric properties and valid for assessing the impacts of COVID-19 responses among healthcare professionals.

Work-life balance satisfaction in crisis times: from luxury to necessity – The role of organization's responses during COVID-19 lockdown

Purpose: This study examines how satisfaction with work-life balance (WLB) in combination with satisfaction with organization's COVID-19 responses (SOCV19R) helps to enhance subjective well-being and performance during the lockdown due to COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach: The data of this time-lagged study were gathered through an online survey with three-waves between March and May 2020 in Spain (N = 167). Hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS were used to test the hypotheses. Findings: Direct relationships between SOCV19R and subjective well-being and performance were not significant. Instead, SOCV19R increased employees' well-being and performance through a higher satisfaction with WLB (full mediation). Originality/value: The novelty of this study is the evaluation of SOCV19R as a form of organizational support in times of crisis. This study suggests that a good organizational reaction to face a crisis such as the pandemic, encourages employees' WLB and helps them to boost their well-being and performance. It may be concluded that work-life balance (WLB) in Spain was seen as a luxury in good times and turned out to be a necessity in bad times. The present study recommends practical implications and provides lessons for human resource management for future crises or similar work conditions. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Actually Existing Commons: Using the Commons to Reclaim the City

In Paraisópolis, a slum in São Paulo (Brazil) housing over 100.000 inhabitants, the Covid crisis seemed to have less of a death toll (0,0217%) than in other areas of the city (an average of 0,0652% as of May 2020);or at least it did at first. The sense of community in the area is strong, leading to many community initiatives and organisations to rise to the challenge of combating the pandemic with little help from the authorities. The community’s initial efficient response to the Covid crisis relied heavily on self‐reliance and self‐organization to mobilise common resources. Despite their later failure in containing the virus, the community’s response to the pandemic is exemplary of a well‐known phenomenon: how communities are able to mobilise the commons to create general welfare. The commons concept is used in this contribution to help us better understand slum governance and the power and limitations of community reliance. At the same time, we aim to refine our understanding of the commons as a contentious category rooted in agonistic relationships instead of the romanticised leftist social imaginary that views the commons as purely anti‐capitalist. Thus, we explicitly argue for a view of the commons and commoning that transcends the narrow “Leftist imaginary” of the commons as egalitarian, inclusive, anti‐capitalist, horizontal, and as expressions of sharing (and caring), and instead views the commons as embedded in everyday realities, where commoning practices emerge as practises that support the reproduction of (social) life. © 2022 by the author(s);.

Children's Rights and COVID-19 Responses under the African Union: Recent Developments and Challenges

There is little doubt that children are at risk of being seriously affected by the socio-economic impact and the response measures to the COVID-19 pandemic that may inadvertently affect their rights, interests and well-being. UNICEF has declared that unless states act together, globally and regionally, to address this, it is possible that the pandemic will permanently cause damage to children and our shared future. The pandemic poses real challenges for children around the world, particularly the developing countries in Africa. Most African countries are already bedevilled by socio-economic frailties, corruption, conflict and institutional problems. In this article we explore responses to COVID-19 from the African Union (AU), to ascertain how regional responses have integrated the protection of the rights and interests of children. With the African Children's Charter as a guide, it is argued that institutions at the AU continental and subregional levels are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of children's rights as a distinct issue rather than being part of women's concerns. The AU celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the African Children's Charter in 2020, and this occasion provides a timely opportunity to reflect on how regional institutions are integrating the principles of children's rights in regional governance processes and decision-making.

Credibility Contests: Media Debates on Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Responses and the Role of Citizens in Health Crises.

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and North America, news outlets ran a series of stories reporting on "do-it-yourself" (DIY) coronavirus responses that were created and implemented by citizens. This news discourse exemplifies and can illuminate wider shifts in the roles of citizens in science, as individuals outside professional science institutions are becoming more actively involved in scientific knowledge production than before, while the epistemic authority of professional "expert" scientists has been increasingly contested. This paper focuses on DIY citizenship, taking news discourses on citizens' DIY coronavirus responses as a lens to explore wider questions around the changing ways in which the roles of different public health actors are delineated and represented under conditions of significant social and epistemic uncertainty. We aim to shed new light on the nature of-and the role of the news media in mediating-the credibility contests and boundary work that is currently at play around DIY citizenship. We do so by focusing on four discourses: polarized discourses around DIY face masks and hand sanitisers; delineation of credible from incredible interventions and actors around DIY coronavirus treatments and tests; delineation of professional science from "fringe" citizen science; and discourses declaring that "we're all in this together." We conclude that making sense of these discourses requires a thorough appreciation of the context in which they emerged. Our analysis reveals how emancipatory accounts of DIY citizenship can mask structural inequalities underlying who can and is expected to "do-it-themselves," and how.

Maintaining population health in low- and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic: Why we should be investing in Community Health Workers.

Community health workers in low- and middle-income country primary health care systems are well suited to perform essential functions on the frontlines of Covid-19 pandemic responses. However, clear and coordinated guidance, updated infection control training, and reliable access to personal protective equipment must be ensured in order to deploy them safely and effectively. With these additional responsibilities, community health workers must also be supported to ensure that hard-fought gains in population health, including progress on non-communicable diseases, are sustained throughout the pandemic.