Considering the complexities of virtual student mobility as an approach to inclusive internationalisation in the post-pandemic period

The COVID-19 pandemic increased virtual student mobility as an elective choice and an emergency solution. Whether brought on by the pandemic or encouraged as a solution for more sustainable international education programming, virtual student mobility is a complex method for making internationalisation more inclusive. This qualitative research examines 16 Erasmus students' experiences with emergency virtual student mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a reflective assessment of two scholar-practitioners. Findings revealed three themes: teaching and learning challenges, the burden of environmental code-switching, and deficient intercultural socialisation as a result of missed experiences. Overall, results and findings show that some virtual student mobility programs were perceived as a concrete challenge, disappointment, and inadequate learning experience for Erasmus students. The results also challenge the purported inclusiveness of virtual student mobility programs. The paper concludes with the need to reconsider virtual student mobility as inclusive internationalisation, and offers concrete implications for policy, practice, and research.

Inheritance and innovation: maintain academic communications in microsurgery under the normalized prevention and control of COVID-19 pandemics.

Chinese Journal of Microsurgery, based on the premise of doing well in the prevention and control of COVID-19 pandemics, shall keep on driving on the inheritance and innovation, carry forward the spirit of microsurgery, give full play to the advantages of microsurgery technology and improve the level of surgical repair and reconstruction, as well as try new ways for academic communications and give full play to the roles of an academic platform for a professional magazine;Clinical Orthopaedic Microsurgery (internal communication), the internal journal of editorial office, is the "showcase in China" to highlight and disseminate the achievements in microsurgery, focus on the support for the Chinese young microsurgeons who work in the front-line of medical services, provide a platform effectively for the young microsurgeons in China to actively participate in the Sino-English literary exchange, and truly "publish the papers on the land of our motherland".Copyright © 2022 by the authors.

Development and empirical study of international student satisfaction model of online course learning interaction in chinese universities.

COVID-19 has disrupted education internationalisation around the world, making online learning a necessary means of learning. This study proposes an International Student Satisfaction Index Model (ISSM) on the interaction of online international courses in Chinese universities, aiming to investigate the potential factors that affect international students' online learning interaction. Based on the large-scale online course practice in Chinese universities during the pandemic, this study adopted a stratified random sampling method to select 320 international students participating in online courses as a research sample. The model proposed in this study includes four antecedent variables, one target variable, and one outcome variable. This study is quantitative, using SPSS26.0 and AMOS 21.0 to analyse the collected empirical data, and the results verify the nine research hypotheses proposed and the applicability of the online course international students' satisfaction index model (ISSM) proposed. The research results provide strong theoretical and practical support for international students' satisfaction with online course learning interaction, which is conducive to the reform of online courses and improving international students' retention rate in the online course.

Challenging foreign investments with digital transformation: a tribute to Yair Aharoni

It is generally accepted that open and competitive markets are necessary to ensure economic growth and that the decision-making process of foreign investment involves 'an intricate structure of attitudes and opinion, social relationships both in and outside the firm, and the way such attitudes, opinions and social relationships are changing'. Therefore, the aim of the research is to explore the characteristics of Italian companies with increasing revenues during COVID-19 to explain if a higher level of innovation affects the survival/adaptability, as well as performance in terms of internationalisation. Based on a review of OECD data on business dynamism that highlights changes in economies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the hypothesis is tested with a survey of a sample of 100 Italian SMEs. The results confirm that innovation investments helped maximise revenues in the pandemic period, thanks to foreign investments.

Innovation and internationalisation during times of economic growth, crisis, and recovery prior to Covid-19: A configurational approach comparing Spanish manufacturing family and non-family firms

Based primarily on the Resource-Based View and prior evidence, this study gauges the potential differences in innovative behaviour between international family firms and non-family firms when conditions change drastically in the business environment (i.e. from a situation of economic growth to one of downturn, and then to recovery). The research setting is a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms between 2007 and 2016 (i.e. pre-Covid-19). During this period (2009-2013), the global economic and financial crisis affected Spain. Thus, three sub-periods are distinguished in the empirical analysis: growth, crisis, and recovery. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, our findings show that the paths of innovation activities that promote internationalisation via exporting in family and non-family firms are somewhat dissimilar in each sub-period, supporting the argument that the causal effect of innovation on internationalisation is heavily dependent on environmental conditions. Compared to non-family firms, our results show that when family firms internationalise, they follow a wide variety and more stable number of paths in innovation activities. Our findings also provide additional evidence to support the argument of heterogeneity among family firms.

The effects of international research collaboration on the policy impact of research: A causal inference drawing on the journal Lancet

Research findings have been widely used as evidence for policy-making. The internationalisation of research activities has been increasing in recent decades, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies have revealed that international research collaboration can enhance the academic impact of research. However, the effects that international research collaboration exerts on the policy impact of research are still unknown. This study aims to examine the effects of international research collaboration on the policy impact of research (as measured by the number of citations in policy documents) using a causal inference approach. Research articles published by the journal Lancet between 2000 and 2019 were selected as the study sample (n = 6098). The number of policy citations of each article was obtained from Overton, the largest database of policy citations. Propensity score matching analysis, which takes a causal inference approach, was used to examine the dataset. Four other matching methods and alternative datasets of different sizes were used to test the robustness of the results. The results of this study reveal that international research collaboration has significant and positive effects on the policy impact of research (coefficient = 4.323, p < 0.001). This study can provide insight to researchers, research institutions and grant funders for improving the policy impact of research. © The Author(s) 2023.

Reducing academic flying beyond COVID‐19: Drivers, alternatives, and avenues for change

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the underlying reasons that sustain high levels of academic flying, and examines how a low‐carbon academia with less air travel might come about. Data from 30 interviews with academics showed that expectations of internationalisation, networking, and ideals of a productive academic stand among the strongest drivers of academic flying. These drivers come forth from underlying objectives such as pursuing excellence in research and working towards successful careers. Findings from this research suggest that institutional and cultural change are prerequisites to mainstream practical alternatives to academic flying, such as wider use of digital communication tools, grounded travelling, and low‐carbon conferences and meetings. We see a role for universities, grant‐providing authorities, and other academic organisations to include environmental standards and criteria in internationalisation strategies, the concept of excellence, and funding evaluation processes. From our analysis of academics' experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic, we identify three factors that appear essential in determining whether digital communication tools can substitute for physical presence: (1) desired type of interaction, (2) existing social relations among participants, and (3) number of participants. Finally, we discuss whether and to what extent voluntary guidelines, the adoption of digital tools, and other soft measures may lead to cuts in academic flying at the scale and pace required for meeting climate targets, suggesting that enforcing limits on academic air travel might be unavoidable. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Geographical Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Re-imagining International Higher Education Partnerships in the Aftermath of COVID-19

This chapter explores how international higher education partnerships can be re-imagined in the aftermath of COVID-19. From the perspective of South Africa, it considers the impact COVID-19 has had on the country's higher education sector and explores how lessons learnt from the pandemic can inform the re-imagining of higher education internationalisation. In doing so, the pandemic is discussed as a phenomenon that simultaneously reaffirms the importance of internationalisation of higher education, functions as an accelerator of innovation, and has the potential to deepen existing inequalities. The pandemic is understood in this context as a crisis that has disrupted higher education in unprecedented ways. However, it is also considered an opportune moment to critically reflect on higher education internationalisation, particularly regarding inequalities in traditional internationalisation activities and partnerships. In this sense, the pandemic becomes ‘a portal', in the words of Roy (2020), an opportunity to break with the past of imbalanced partnerships. Focussing on both people and technology, partnerships can be a powerful tool in the process of imagining higher education internationalisation anew. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

How commitment and platform adoption drive the e-commerce performance of SMEs: A mixed-method inquiry into e-commerce affordances

To cope with the digital transition exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, managers of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to adopt innovative practices to face uncertain scenarios and create long-term value, identified as transformational entrepreneurship practices. Among emerging digital technologies, digital platforms are shaping and outgrowing the e-commerce channel representing a potential opportunity for manufacturing SMEs to embrace digital transformation. Drawing on affordance theory, this research uses a mixed method approach to investigate how manufacturing SMEs' e-commerce commitment and digital platform adoption stimulate the actualization of three e-commerce affordances: consumer knowledge generation, internationalization, and customer diversification. Based on survey responses from 165 manufacturing SME managers, we find that direct selling through owned websites actualizes consumer knowledge generation and internationalization, indirect selling actualizes customer diversification and internationalization, and agency selling through third-party platforms actualizes all three affordances. The relationship between e-commerce commitment and ecommerce performance is mediated by consumer knowledge generation and internationalization but not by customer diversification. A fsQCA analysis outlines seven configurations actualizing these e-commerce affordances by pairing different ecommerce approaches with degrees of e-commerce commitment. Finally, an analysis of open-ended questions from 24 respondents complements the study and deeply interprets the seven unique configurations outlined. © 2023 The Authors

Legal Incentives and Constraints on Innovation: Keeping the Balance

The COVID-19 pandemic forced civil society and business to face a new reality where much greater reliance needed to be placed on networked devices and internet distributed communications, including the provision of services ranging from medical advice to food, entertainment and even the facility to interact with family. The ability to meet in-person with family, friends, colleagues, business associates or customers was severely restricted leaving internationalisation as a utopian dream as borders were closed, students were denied access to a physical classrooms and businesses had to rapidly "pivot” or fail. These alternatives to real life have seemed less appealing to many, with every aspect of life "going online”, whether virtualectures, exams, meetings, mediations, court appearances, job interviews, shopping for a piece of cheese or starting a new trade relationship. Much innovation over the last two years has been around deploying online business models. There has also been a wider use of artificial intelligence to support "efficient” operations partly stimulated by the falling staffing levels due to the pandemic directly through sickness or forced isolations, or indirectly by a growing sense of the futility of working for a business, known as the Great Resignation ("Over the 12 months ending in January 2022, hires totalled 76.4 million and separations totalled 70.0 million…” indicating a huge refocusing on jobs in the USA) This paper looks at the challenge for legal systems to pivot around the growing trends in deployments of online innovation. Some businesses are now widely deploying software-based analysis systems, such as Airbnb, which is using them to "verify the identity and trustworthiness of a user of an online system” and flag potential guests who may be problematic. Although Airbnb is a multibillion-dollar business, it is a good example of how through using publicly available data, user supplied information, and smart software (artificial intelligence) a business can make predictions on the behaviour of its potential customers. Other AI resources have been creating new gaming scenarios, reporting on the news, and even creating new artworks and music. These kinds of use of AI in the marketplace have challenged the legal frameworks that support individual privacy and also ideas around human creativity. © 2022, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All right reserved.

International Mobility Flows and COVID-19 Effects: Evidence from Instituto Politécnico de Bragança

Facing the difficulties and the new challenges that COVID-19 has created for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), the future needs to analyse and reflect on this crisis. Considering the increasing value of international mobility in Portuguese HEIs in the last decades, this research aims to study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the flow of student and faculty mobility. Since international students, as well as teaching staff mobility, are an asset for many HEIs, this study will be applied to the Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (IPB), an institution located in the interior of Portugal where the weight of international students is quite significant. The paper provides an overview of the mobility flows between the period 2004/2005 and the 2020/2021 academic year. According to the findings obtained, the restrictions on international physical mobility are observed as the biggest challenges that occurred in IPB during the COVID-19. From the results presented, a sharp growth in international mobility flows is evident until the 2018/2019 academic year, as a consequence of the investment made by the IPB's presidency, in which one of the pillars of the institution's growth is based on the internationalisation strategy. Afterwards, in the last two academic years, there has been a sharp decline;both in terms of student mobility, on average, there was a decrease of around 26.0%, and faculty mobility, on average, there was a decrease of approximately 55%. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Drifts of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Towards Pedagogical Innovation: A Foretelling Bibliometric Analysis

In the current global world, and also due to the CoVID-19 pandemic and the evolving digital technologies, education is changing faster and more dramatically now than at any time in history. In this context, education is drifting away from the traditional approaches and into the integration of international, intercultural and global dimensions in higher education, vocational education and training, as well as in secondary education. Thus, the purpose of this exploratory study is to unveil current trends and future needs of research and practice focused on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), to set conceptual foundations for further pedagogical innovation. Following the PRISMA 2020 statement, the corpus of the study integrates a final set of research studies (n = 135), published between 2019–2022. Considering the main key-terms of recent literature in the area, the collected data were analyzed by means of a bibliometric analysis, using VOSviewer's network and overlay visualization of most frequent terms. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Perception of the Internationalization Process by the University Employees: The Case Study of Innopolis University

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a game changer for many aspects of the educational environment worldwide. Together with positive aspects of digital acceleration, there have also been obstacles in keeping internationalization processes on track. In this paper, we consider a case study of an educational institution: Innopolis University. We analyze the perception of teaching and research staff for what concerns internationalization. We organized a survey involving Innopolis staff and survey questions aimed at revealing their attitude and understanding of the process and its relevance. The outcome is twofold: on one hand the understanding of the perception will be instrumental for the International Relation Office to better involve the faculty in the process;on the other hand, sharing the result with the scientific community will help other organizations to reflect on their own progress and to better involve their staff. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Role of formal and informal networks in the relationship between government support and Ghanaian indigenous firms' degree of internationalisation

PurposeThis study aims to assess the potential mediating effects of formal and informal networks in the relationship between government support and Ghanaian indigenous firms' degree of internationalisation.Design/methodology/approachThis study was a cross-sectional design, where the structured questionnaire was used in gathering data from 301 indigenous Ghanaian firms. The path estimation was conducted by running structural equation modelling in AMOS v.23.FindingsIt was concluded that government support had a significant positive effect on Ghanaian indigenous firms' degree of internationalisation. Formal network was found to partially mediate the relationship between government support and indigenous firms' degree of internationalisation. Finally, it was concluded that informal networks had no mediating effect.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation is that the effect of the government support and network strategy was only explored on indigenous exporters, meaning that exporters which did not fall within the definition of indigenous firms were excluded from the study. Future studies could conduct a comparative study on the same variables, using indigenous and non-indigenous firms.Practical implicationsIt is recommended that Ghanaian exporters should participate in government training and workshop programmes focussing on building export business strategies and networking to improve export activities.Originality/valueThis study's unique contribution is its investigation of how networking portfolio, including formal and informal ties, helps explain the nexus between government support and the internationalisation of local firms in the developing market, such as Ghanaians.

Deploying Internationalisation at Home during Lockdown

This is a report on a variety of internationalisation at home (IaH) initiatives coordinated by Bordeaux University since 2020 (the start of the COVID pandemic). IaH is understood as "the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (Beelen and Jones 69). On site, IaH programmes are defined in the following ways: 1) The opportunity for domestic students to study with incoming international students enrolled at Bordeaux University. 2) The opportunity to study with students from other universities through multi-institutional or bilateral virtual exchange. The institutional framework was provided by the NewDEAL project (open, student-centered and connected programmes, within a framework of transformative learning). We are therefore in a position to consider how IaH can best be deployed at University. We aim to discuss the merits and challenges of our IaH offer. © 2022 APLIUT. All rights reserved.

Innovation in times of crisis: The relevance of digitalization and early internationalization strategies

Using the resource-based view, we examine the roles of international and digital orientations as determinants of the digitalization and the early internationalization strategies of international new ventures (INVs). We also examine the effect of implementing those strategies on the innovation performance of INVs during the COVID-19 pandemic. We tested this conceptual framework by using structural equation modeling (AMOS) on a database of 213 INVs. The results indicate that international orientation is a fundamental determinant of both strategies, while digital orientation only fosters a digitalization strategy. Moreover, both strategies were critical to increase innovation performance during the pandemic. This study expands the literature in the field of international entrepreneurship in three different ways: i) it highlights the relevance of innovation performance for INVs during the pandemic;ii) it underlines the relevance of both the early internationalization and the digitization strategies to promote innovation performance;and iii) it reinforces the importance of international and digital orientations as critical resources for defining strategy. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.

Intercultural And Professional Skills in Student Mobility to Boost Employability

The internationalisation of higher education institutions is mainly focused on mobility programs. Increasingly programs try to improve the intercultural learning of their students through internationalising their curriculum and assessing their intercultural experiences. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the acquisition of intercultural competence and professional skills of higher education students during a specific short Erasmus+ mobility program. Thirty-two students came from four different countries and fields of study: Spain, Belgium, France, and China. A specific teaching methodology was used to promote the development of intercultural and professional competencies. A mixed methods approach was developed to collect data. The results showed that the students acquired intercultural competence and important professional skills. They improved their awareness of the importance of working in multicultural teams and settings;for 100% of them, this was just the first step in a developmental process. The participants reflected on their intercultural learning experiences and learned how to reflect and learn about intercultural and professional misunderstandings using coping mechanisms to face these issues. © 2022 by author(s).

COVID and challenges in the context of family firms internationalisation: a review and emerging research pathways

Purpose-This study aims to fulfil a twofold purpose: first, to discuss the changes and unique challenges that family firms (FFs) face during the COVID-19 pandemic and/or they will face in the post-COVID era, and second, to reflect on emerging research directions and contextual factors that should be taken into account in future explorations for the benefit of FF scholars who will study post-COVID FF internationalisation. Design/methodology/approach-To address the twofold purpose of the study, we conduct an integrative review of 31 peer-reviewed journal articles in the international business (IB) and FF literature on COVID-19, FFs and internationalisation. Findings-COVID-19 brought changes in IB strategies, IB relationships and human resource management. In responding and/or adapting to those changes, during and post-COVID, FFs face and are expected to face challenges that mainly refer to FFs' transition to digitalisation and the simultaneous preservation of socio-emotional wealth dimensions while maintaining their international presence. The authors suggest that future research explores the role of digitalisation in achieving FFs' internationalisation, IB relationship building activities and training and leading international employees. Further contextual factors (e.g. succession issues, family structures) should also be accounted for when exploring such post-COVID IB phenomena. Originality/value-This study comprises an initial attempt to encompass the interface of FF internationalisation and COVID-19. It also proposes research directions that are likely to set the stage in FFs' post-COVID internationalisation research.

Future Trends

Given the cultural continuity and persistence of hyper-masculine groups such as outlaw bikers, what is the future likely to hold within the context of contemporary warband societies? With an arguably widening gaps of inequality, increased social tension and an ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, how will young men and women respond? This chapter explores the future for outlaw biker clubs through the concept of the outlaw biker/ community contract, and socioeconomic inequality. It will explore the trends of internationalisation and posit the increased trajectory of the American-styled bikers and Australian clubs impacting the major groups in Europe and post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Asia. This chapter will discuss territoriality and the violence that often follows such moves of internationalisation and assess the implications for conflict. Lastly, there will be some discussion on the outlaw biker/military nexus where clubs are actively recruiting combat veterans and current serving military personnel.

COVID-19 impacts on multilateralism and diplomacy: the potential of business diplomacy

This article begins by analysing the pandemic as an 'accelerator' of previous trends. The international context from which these trends emerged was one of a 'crisis in globalisation', in conjunction with an increase in protectionism and heightened tensions between Donald Trump's USA and Xi Jinping's China. After analysing how multilateralism has been questioned and eroded, the present article turns its attention to currently unfolding developments: from transregionalism á la carte to minilateralism, as encapsulated by the notion of 'multipolarity without multilateralism'. However, one strategic tool in particular has the potential to serve as a vital component of a formula to revive multilateralism in a context of crisis: business diplomacy. This sphere of knowledge, strategically applied, may serve as a roadmap to internationalise and promote multilateralism, while attributing due recognition to the role of business as an actor capable of shaping the ecosystem and, specifically, redesigning aspects of the great contemporary political consensus, from the rules of business internationalisation to the 2030 Agenda. © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.