Covid-19 and our understanding of risk, emergencies, and crises

It seems that 2020 is the year that keeps on giving. On 1 January, the world woke up to fresh updates on Australia's Black Summer and its tragic consequences for wildlife and local communities. This crisis was the first in a series to also include political protests in Hong Kong, and Belarus, an explosion in Beirut's port, an oil spill in Mauritius, an outbreak of Ebola and measles in the DRC and, of course, the killing of George Floyd, giving fresh impetus to Black Lives Matters protests within, and beyond, America's borders. All this and more in a year in which an estimated 168 million people would have needed humanitarian assistance - and that is without the elephant in the room. But, of course, the pandemic has not affected everyone in the same way or to the same extent - that is to say, it is not universally 'extreme'. If anything, the pandemic has stripped away a facade that hitherto largely obscured structural cracks in society - or particular vulnerabilities to extreme contexts by BAME or people with disabilities or those (particularly women) having to home school their children. Then there are those running businesses and facing unprecedented organizational challenges: problems with supply chains, shortages of personal protection equipment, staff or paying customers. Finally, there are others who have found themselves at the sharpest end of the pandemic, having lost someone they cared about. It is these varied groups then that find themselves at the coal face. The pandemic may not be an extreme context for all - but it is for them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Extreme work environment and career commitment of nurses: empirical evidence from Egypt and Peru

Purpose: This paper aim to analyse the motives behind the commitment of nurses to their profession despite their intense job duties during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical sample comprises of 35 semi-structured interviews with public sector hospital nurses in under-researched contexts of Egypt and Peru. Findings: Three types of motives were found to play a critical role in nurses' commitment to their profession despite the difficulties associated with extreme work conditions. These factors include cultural (religious values, governmental coercion), contextual (limited education, organisational support) and personal (good nurse identity, submissive nature) dimensions. Originality/value: This paper is one of the pioneering works to link existing literature streams on career commitment, extreme jobs, extreme context and management under disruptions (particularly COVID-19) by analysing these aspects in the under-researched Peruvian and Egyptian contexts. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Coping with COVID-19 - Which Resilience Mechanisms Enabled Austrian Nonprofit Organizations to Weather the Pandemic Storm?

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global crisis affecting the work and partially the existence of businesses, governments, administrations and nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The latter not only faced severe challenges themselves, but also play(ed) a major role in fighting the pandemic, especially those offering services in social and health care. Maintaining service delivery under pandemic conditions to serve the often vital needs of clients requires (organizational) resilience. This concept generally relates to the ability to withstand adversity, to adapt in a turbulent environment and respond to (disruptive) change. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 33 interviews with nonprofit executives, this paper explores the impact of the pandemic on Austrian NPOs active in health and social care in terms of contextual challenges faced. Our study contributes to (nonprofit) resilience research and extreme context research literature as it illustrates how NPOs coped with this disruptive extreme context. Our findings show which resilience mechanisms (i.e. all kinds of resilient behavior, resources and capabilities) were helpful in overcoming pandemic challenges and getting through these hard times.

Talent management practices in the extreme context of hospitality sector: an exploratory study

PurposeThis paper aims to specifically analyse the extent to which talent management practices in the post-COVID-19 era differ from those before the pandemic in the extreme work context of Egyptian hospitality sector. Design/methodology/approachThe study uses an exploratory qualitative research approach where semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 full-time employees working at hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt). Moreover, thematic analysis was undertaken on the interview transcripts. FindingsThe findings revealed that in the post-COVID-19 era, the case hotels exclusively use the inclusive talent management approach, in which all staff are recognised by the management as talents with the same workplace privileges. This approach helped to mitigate the negative influences caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the findings highlighted the criticality of competencies such as multitasking along with in hospitality sector employees in relation to extreme context necessitated by COVID-19. The findings further established that when facing extreme events, such as COVID-19, a shift in training activities towards activating positive mental health and effective shock management among employees is also needed. This study found that organisational support and continuous learning play a vital role in individual employees' resilience development, which also helped in retaining them. Originality/valueThis paper is one of the pioneering empirical studies on the relationship between talent management practices in extreme contexts and the influences of global disruptions resulting from COVID-19. Moreover, it is one of the few studies to specifically undertake a comparative assessment of the differences in talent management practices pre- and post-COVID-19 time period in the hospitality sector. The study findings contribute to multiple literature streams including extreme context, hospitality, human resource management and transaction stress model.

COVID-19, aftermath, impacts, and hospitality firms: An international perspective.

Drawing on the theory of resilience, and on an international sample of 45 predominantly small hospitality businesses, this exploratory study extends knowledge about the key concerns, ways of coping, and the changes and adjustments undertaken by these firms' owners and managers during the COVID-19 outbreak. The various emergent relationships between the findings and the considered conceptual underpinnings of the literature on resilience, revealed nine theoretical dimensions. These dimensions critically illuminate and extend understanding concerning the actions and alternatives owners-managers resorted to when confronted with an extreme context. For instance, with financial impacts and uncertainty being predominant issues among participants, over one-third indicated actioning alternative measures to create much-needed revenue streams, and preparing for a new post-COVID-19 operational regime, respectively. Furthermore, 60 percent recognised making changes to the day-to-day running of the business to respond to initial impacts, or biding time in anticipation of a changing business and legal environment.