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The improvisations needed to adapt to COVID-19 teaching and learning conditions affected students and faculty alike. This study uses chaos theory and improvisation to examine an undergraduate communication research methods course that was initially delivered synchronously/face-to-face and then transitioned to asynchronous/online in March 2020. Reflective writings were collected at the end of the semester with the 25 students enrolled in the course and follow-up interviews conducted with six students. Thematic analysis revealed that available and attentive student-participant, student-student, and student-instructor communication complemented learner-centered and person-centered goals, but unavailable or inattentive communication, especially with participants and students in the research team, contributed to negative perceptions of learner-centered goals. Implications explore how communication research methods pedagogy may achieve greater available, attentive, and learner/person-oriented goals through modeling, resourcing, reflexivity, and appreciation in online and offline course delivery to enhance shifts in communication pedagogy, whether voluntarily or involuntarily initiated by faculty.
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This chapter presents the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the course of studies and life career skills development of undergraduate students at the University of Macedonia, a mid-sized public Greek University. It describes a multivariate methodology research that investigated how the students, first-hand experienced the unexpected changes from face-to-face on campus to synchronous online education during the lockdown and how they coped with these changes. Change is considered and described as a main component within current life and career trajectories addressing chaotic and unpredictable circumstances while Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC) offers the theoretical background of the chapter. The research followed the mixed methods paradigm: a multilevel embedded sequential explanatory design including a participant selection model and multivariate data analysis methods. A survey (N = 621) was conducted;individual interviews and focus groups' discussions further explained the quantitative findings. The emerging clusters of students revealed similarities in feelings, motivation, adaptation, and life career skills development. The first cluster comprised of older, digitally high-skilled students, with the required technological equipment, adaptable to change, self-regulated, strongly in favor of synchronous online education;in the second cluster were grouped the younger, digitally medium-skilled students, who regularly participated in both modalities, critically recognized the advantages of either one, feeling strongly in favor of a combination;finally, the third cluster included digitally medium-skilled students who found serious difficulty in using online platforms, dissatisfied with social isolation and distant interaction, strongly preferring face-to-face instruction, valuing direct physical contact, social connection, and networking. © 2023 by Ioanna Papavassiliou-Alexiou, Christina Zourna, Nikos Koutsoupias and Aikaterini Papakota.
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Purpose: This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research objectives of this study were to: identify the key technologies that act as a response mechanism during the chaos event, specifically in the case of COVID-19;examine how technologies evolve, develop and diffuse in an immediate crisis and a chaotic environment;theorise various types and periods of technological response and progress during the emergence of chaos and the stages that unfold;and develop policy-oriented recommendations and establish technological foundations to address subsequent chaos events. Design/methodology/approach: This study used the grounded theory as a methodology with a mixed-method approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods. The authors used the quantitative method to assist with the qualitative step to build the TRPC theory. Accordingly, this study integrated machine learning and text mining approaches to the qualitative data analysis following the steps of the grounded theory approach. Findings: As a result of the TRPC theory development process, the authors identified three types of technologies (survival, essential and enhancement technologies) and five types of periods (stable, initial, survival-dominant, essential-dominant and enhancement-dominant periods) that are specific to chaos-technology interactions. The policy implications of this study demonstrate that a required technological base and know-how must be established before a chaotic event emerges. Research limitations/implications: Concerning the limitations of this study, social media data has advantages over other data sources, such as the examination of dynamic areas and analyses of immediate responses to chaos. However, other researchers can examine publications and patent sources to augment the findings concerning scientific approaches and new inventions in relation to COVID-19 and other chaos-specific developments. The authors developed the TRPC theory by studying the COVID-19 pandemic, however, other researchers can utilise it to study other chaos-related conditions, such as chaotic events that are caused by natural disasters. Other scholars can investigate the technological response and progress pattern in other rapidly emerging chaotic events of an uncertain and complex nature to augment these findings. Practical implications: Following the indications of the OECD (2021a) and considering the study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (Kritikos, 2020), the authors identified the key technologies that are significant for chaos and COVID-19 response using machine learning and text intelligence approach. Accordingly, the authors mapped all technological developments using clustering approaches, and examined the technological progress within the immediate chaos period using social media data. Social implications: The key policy implication of this study concerns the need for policymakers to develop policies that will help to establish the required technological base and know-how before chaos emerges. As a result, a rapid response can be implemented to mitigate the chaos and transform it into a competitive advantage. The authors also revealed that this recommendation overlaps with the model of dynamic capabilities in the literature (Teece and Pisano, 2003). Furthermore, this study recommends that nations and organisations establish a technological base that specifically includes technologies that bear 3A characteristics. These are the most crucial technologies for the survival- and essential-dominant stages. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that chaos accelerates technological progress through the rapid adoption and diffusion of technologies into different fields. Hence, nations and organisations should regard this rapid progress as an opportunity and establish the prior knowledge base and technologies before chaos emerges. Originality/value: The authors have contributed to he chaos studies and the relationship between chaos and technological development by establishing the first theoretical foundation using the grounded theory approach, hereafter referred to as the TRPC theory. As part of the TRPC theory, the authors present three periods of technological response in the following sequence: survival technology, essential technology and enhancement technology. Moreover, this study illustrates the evolving technological importance and priorities as the periods of technological progress proceed under rapidly developing chaos. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Like other pandemics, COVID-19 also created a huge socioeconomic imbalance and distress in people. Often, every pandemic is characterized as chaotic and complex. Hence, the nature of the virus spread and deaths should be analyzed to prepare for the next similar pandemic. In this analysis, the popular and well-known time series in chaos theory is implemented, and the results are deduced for the states of India. The phase space reconstruction algorithm is implemented, and false nearest neighbor (FNN) method is applied to determine the dimensionality, and also Lyapunov exponent of the time series is estimated. The chaotic nature of COVID-19 cases showed a less severe and low complexity, with the FNN dimension range of 3-5, whereas the COVID-19 deaths showed moderate complexity with FNN dimensions 2-7. Policymakers should take action on medical availability in rural states and control people's movement in highly populated areas.
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COVID-19 , Humans , India/epidemiology , Nonlinear Dynamics , Algorithms , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Resilience is critical to the sustainability of the tourism industry, which was made particularly evident during the COVID-19 crisis. COVID-19 impacted all sectors of the tourism industry revealing previously unknown strengths and weaknesses. Through a longitudinal qualitative approach, we identified the evolving challenges and coping strategies of agritourism operations under the COVID-19 crisis in North Carolina, USA. The results indicate that agritourism operations not only withstood the health crisis but also advanced the management of their operation and customer satisfaction through diversification and reorganization strategies. We use chaos theory to show how agritourism operations took advantage of the context of uncertainty to employ practices that ultimately showcased their resilience.
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Higher education faces dramatic transformations in demographics, politics, culture, labor, and technology—all of which are compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chaos theory offers perspectives for weathering these changes, though ultimately, as the future remains unpredictable, the best instructors can offer is doing their best in their jobs. [ FROM AUTHOR]
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In a previous study, it was shown that firms approaching bankruptcy exhibited less chaos than pair match firms based on their SIC (standard industry classification) code that did not enter bankruptcy. Chaos can be used to compare systems as quantified by calculating the Lyapunov exponent. In this study, the exponent was calculated using time series of daily stock market returns. Given that unhealthy systems display less chaos than healthy systems, bankruptcy is considered in this study as an expression of an unhealthy system. The sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic placed firms under stress. This study successfully uses the Lyapunov exponents calculated for pair match firms based on the newer NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code prior to the emergence of the pandemic to predict bankruptcies occurring shortly afterwards.
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During the Covid-19 pandemic, all sectors experienced chaotic dynamics worldwide. For example, maritime transport, particularly ports as one of its main elements, had to continue operating in this chaotic environment. Ports developed their own strategies to provide resilience against these challenges. However, any study in the related literature has not been reached that reveals resilience strategies of ports by combining literature review and interviews with port practitioners. As a novelty of the study, it was tried to evaluate resilience strategies of ports by grounding chaos theory. Therefore, this study had two aims: (1) identifying the Covid-19 strategies of Turkish container ports; (2) prioritizing these strategies in terms of impact level. First, interviews were conducted with Turkish container port representatives to find out their resilience strategies. These strategies were then validated with a literature review and new ones were detected. Second, separate relation analyses of the strategies were conducted for the interviews and literature. Finally, ports' resilience strategies against Covid-19 disruptions were prioritized using Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the port managers' evaluations. Fuzzy AHP is widely used and accepted in the maritime business literature. This method also diminishes inconsistencies and subjective evaluations by employing fuzzy logic. The results showed that 'Control Mechanism', 'Hygienic Measures', and 'Information Exchange' were the most effective resilience strategies. By using chaos theory, this study helped to theoretically clarify the role of port management approaches to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. These findings can therefore guide container port practitioners in overcoming pandemic conditions.
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Predicting major downturns in financial markets is a popular topic among re-searchers. Improving the models used for this could benefit individuals, investment banks and financial institutions. The latest developments in econophysics provide additional forecasting tools that may aid this endeavor. This paper introduces an innovative method to identify early warnings for major declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) index. This method performs a nonlinear analysis of the log-arithmic returns of the index and then uses the moving Lyapunov exponent as a dynamic indicator of stability. The results show that the fluctuating behavior of the moving Lyapunov exponent forms spikes, which may act as warning signals since they precede all significant events that have caused major drops in the S&P 500 index over the past 20 years, including the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic. © 2022 Infopro Digital Risk (IP) Limited.
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The purpose of this study is to model, map, and identify why some areas present a completely different dispersion pattern of COVID-19, as well as creating a risk model, composed of variables such as probability, susceptibility, danger, vulnerability, and potential damage, that characterises each of the defined regions. The model is based on a risk conceptual model proposed by Bachmann and Allgower in 2001, based on the wildfire terminology, analysing the spatial distribution. Additionally, a model based on population growth, chaotic maps, and turbulent flows is applied in the calculation of the variable probability, based on the work of Bonasera (2020). The results for the Portuguese case are promising, regarding the fitness of the said models and the outcome results of a conceptual model for the epidemiological risk assessment for the spread of coronavirus for each region. © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.. All rights reserved.
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Édouard Glissant’s death precedes the Covid crisis by about a decade. Nevertheless, his description of global communities as highly interconnected and chaotic is eerily prescient in its portrayal of a world highly susceptible to a pandemic, and the concepts that he develops are effective in elucidating the cultural impact of such a crisis. This essay seeks to utilize ideas from the philosophy of Glissant to examine the Covid crisis, focusing on the notions of Relation and chaos-monde that he articulates in Poétique de la relation (1990) and Traité du tout-monde (1997), including his appropriation of Chaos Theory. This analysis will ponder the following questions: What are the implications of the viral spread for Glissant’s notion of Relation? Given Glissant’s account of the Internet in Poétique de la relation and Traité du tout-monde, what does he suggest about the sudden shift towards cyberspace and its consequences for relations and the Relation? What are the implications of the pandemic for the distinction that Glissant makes in La Cohée du lamentin between mondialisation (hegemonic, hierarchical standardization) and mondialité (plural modes of exchange conducive to diversity)? Finally, to what extent do Glissant’s writings present a potential means of utilizing the Relation and chaos-monde to overcome crises such as Covid?
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The purpose of this study was to identify the perceptions of assistant principals as instructional leaders, pre- and post-COVID. This study addressed three research questions: 1) How do assistant principals define and enact instructional leadership? 2) What supports or hinders assistant principals' efforts to engage in instructional leadership/function as instructional leaders? 3) How has instructional leadership for assistant principals (d)evolved throughout the COVID-19 response efforts? Survey participants included 59 secondary Texas Region XI assistant principals, with 10 assistant principals participating in the interview portion of the study. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was used to examine elements of instructional leadership and how assistant principals perceived their roles. Rich, thick descriptions were used to convey assistant principals' perceptions as instructional leaders pre- and post-COVID. The findings revealed that assistant principals felt they enacted instructional leadership primarily by supporting teachers, visiting classrooms, participating in professional learning communities, and building relationships with teachers outside the classroom. Assistant principals felt supported as instructional leaders when their campus principal supported their work as instructional leaders and had support from their peers. Although the assistant principals interviewed were dedicated to being instructional leaders, factors that hindered them from doing this critical work included responding to "fires," managing time, and expectations from central administration and the community. As assistant principals navigated through the 2020-2021 school year, COVID-19 affected their roles as instructional leaders, often requiring campus leaders to focus on safety protocols over instruction. At the time the study concluded, the pandemic was still affecting schools, and long-term changes were unable to be identified. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to quantify the evolutionary mechanism of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impact on international construction multi-projects. Design/methodology/approach: From three concepts of complexity, stressor and detractor risks, a multi-project simulation model under COVID-19 outbreak is proposed to study the characteristics of contingency with three peaks of ordered and disordered states. Specially, COVID-19 brings forth mitigation fee, epidemic prevention fee, holdup fee and schedule delay fee of multi-projects. By integrating parametric model, Monte Carlo and chaos theory, a comparative analysis of its contingency with or without COVID-19 is conducted. Summarizing the simulated results, their total contingencies at certain risk tolerance are obtained at two status of static at one-time point and dynamic over time. Meanwhile, some major risks including detractors, complexities and stressors are screened out for mitigation, especially for epidemic prevention and control. Eventually, the real case is illustrated to demonstrate its validity. Findings: It provides a quantitative analysis framework for the impact of epidemic, a once-in-a-century black swan event with a long tail, on construction multi-projects. Practical implications: It conduct an effective model to quantify impacts of COVID-19 on international construction multi-projects for implementing effective counter-measures, which lay foundation for claims among different stakeholders. Originality/value: The term of detractor risk is applied to describe COVID-19 and quantify its impact upon international construction multi-projects. Further, a hybrid model by integrating parametric model and Monte Carlo in type I/II model is proposed to simulate their contingencies at disordered states. Finally, the simulated outcomes of these models are used to guide effective risk control to meet the requirements by the client. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Strategic business tactics and conducting business are complicated by crisis for the micro and small business, especially a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. The problem to be addressed by this study is the lack of advertising being conducted by owner/managers of micro and small businesses when faced with a global crisis. The purpose of this research through the usage of a qualitative case study was to identify factors affecting the decision to advertise or not advertise for the successful operation of the micro and small business. Advertising and the coronavirus pandemic are complex, chaotic systems. Complexity allowed for the positing of chaos theory as the theoretical perspective and the presentation of the three-body problem. The three-body problem allowed for a postulation and explanation into the relationships between governments, business, and consumers. Participants were micro and small business owner/managers found within Missoula, Montana and were interviewed using a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire allowing the participants to provide answers in their own words giving the study a richness in the data. Participants identified themes including communication, exposure, name awareness (branding), drive sales, business growth, and customer creation and minor categories of an education tool, creates legitimacy, community centricity, and providing a unique selling proposition. The micro and small businesses participating continued to advertise during the coronavirus pandemic to communicate messages about business openness and availability to create revenue. Future research could take the foundations of the three-body problem and use contemporary economic indicators to prove a quantitative foundation for this component of chaos theory in marketing research. A recommendation for using this research presents the practitioner the capability in delivering to the micro and small business owner/manager with reasons for conducting advertising campaigns, especially when facing a crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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Hotel service providers are among the most affected by the evolving Covid-19 pandemic. Although the consequences of the pandemic on hotel operations have been widely examined, the question of how hotel businesses can revive, innovate, and transform in order to survive and recover remains vastly under-researched. This study aims to provide insights on this important topic by analyzing 312 news articles between December 1, 2019, and March 1, 2021, published by global news media, which report hotels' strategies and tactics to deal with the pandemic. Grounded on chaos theory, behavioral learning theory, and an integrated crisis management model, a global pandemic crisis management framework is developed. Practically, the paper reveals best practices applied by hoteliers to deal with the pandemic (e.g., service transformation, smart marketing, strategic collaboration/alliance, mergers and acquisitions, and digitalization) and suggests ways for hotel services providers to adapt to the "new travel" age.