Does the market value sustainable supply chain management? New evidence from the outbreak of COVID-19

This study aims to determine why a firm would ever engage in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) during a turbulent era. Combining stakeholder theory, the resource-based view, and the literature on SSCM, we argue that SSCM can alleviate negative market reactions to severe external crises. Based on analyses of a sample of firms listed in China from 2019 to 2020, the results robustly display a positive relationship between SSCM and the abnormal returns surrounding the outbreak of COVID-19. The findings of this study extend the supply chain literature by constituting an important addition in external crisis times rather than only in normal times.JEL Classification: M14

The Man-Machine Relationship on the Web: Motivation to Use the Internet

In an environment characterized by turmoil and unpredictability, by the digital transition and transformation, and by the economic and social effects caused by the global public crisis (COVID19), this study aims to analyze the motivations for using the internet and making online purchases, identifying the perceived benefits and consumer satisfaction. For this, an exploratory study with descriptive design was carried out, through the administration of a questionnaire (google forms). 385 consumers responded. The data show that there are significant differences between groups (buyers and non-buyers) in terms of motivation, perceptions of benefits and satisfaction. The use of online shopping platforms fosters a relationship that favors efficiency and enhances feelings of control and freedom in purchasing behavior. The experiences lived through technological intermediation, given the possibility of interaction and personalization, add value to brands, create an innovative identity, while contributing to obtaining a memorable and satisfying experience. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Global value chains for medical gloves during the COVID-19 pandemic: Confronting forced labour through public procurement and crisis

This paper evaluates ways in which labour issues in global value chains for medical gloves have been affected by, and addressed through, the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on production in Malaysia and supply to the United Kingdom's National Health Service and draws on a large-scale survey with workers and interviews with UK government officials, suppliers and buyers. Adopting a Global Value Chain (GVC) framework, the paper shows how forced labour endemic in the sector was exacerbated during the pandemic in the context of increased demand for gloves. Attempts at remediation are shown to operate through both a reconfigured value chain in which power shifted dramatically to the manufacturers and a context where public procurement became higher in profile than ever before. It is argued that the purchasing power of governments must be leveraged in ways that more meaningfully address labour issues, and that this must be part of value chain resilience. © 2022 The Authors. Global Networks published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Social media reconstructions of urban identity during the COVID‐19 pandemic

The COVID‐19 pandemic has profoundly affected people in urban areas. This article reports on a comparative empirical study of the pandemic in Guangzhou and Xi'an in 2021 and analyses how residents responded to social media during the crisis. Using Baidu's hot search time machine to search for hot topics related to the spread of disease during each outbreak of COVID‐19, we collected 35 and 41 hashtags for Guangzhou's and Xi'an's epidemics, respectively. Based on a thematic analysis of those hashtags, we considered how residents reconstructed expressions of urban identity in both cities. We found that China's unique official accountability system in local anti‐epidemic practices led to stricter forms of top‐down urban governance and that urban residents deployed forms of bottom‐up agency in response. Our work provides a refined agenda for geographers and other social scientists to examine the interconnections among urban resilience, urban social responses to major public crises, and urban culture.

Taking a Language Detour: How International Migrants Speaking a Minority Language Seek COVID-Related Information in Their Host Countries

Information seeking is crucial for people's self-care and wellbeing in times of public crises. Extensive research has investigated empirical understandings as well as technical solutions to facilitate information seeking by domestic citizens of affected regions. However, limited knowledge is established to support international migrants who need to survive a crisis in their host countries. The current paper presents an interview study with two cohorts of Chinese migrants living in Japan (N=14) and the United States (N=14). Participants reflected on their information seeking experiences during the COVID pandemic. The reflection was supplemented by two weeks of self-tracking where participants maintained records of their COVID-related information seeking practice. Our data indicated that participants often took language detours, or visits to Mandarin resources for information about the COVID outbreak in their host countries. They also made strategic use of the Mandarin information to perform selective reading, cross-checking, and contextualized interpretation of COVID-related information in Japanese or English. While such practices enhanced participants' perceived effectiveness of COVID-related information gathering and sensemaking, they disadvantaged people through sometimes incognizant ways. Further, participants lacked the awareness or preference to review migrant-oriented information that was issued by the host country's public authorities despite its availability. Building upon these findings, we discussed solutions to improve international migrants' COVID-related information seeking in their non-native language and cultural environment. We advocated inclusive crisis infrastructures that would engage people with diverse levels of local language fluency, information literacy, and experience in leveraging public services. © 2022 ACM.

Brief Considerations Regarding the Concept of Rule of Law in the Context of the Covid-19 Global Crisis

In the present paper we aim to analyse some aspects in which the COVID-19 pandemic generated a crisis regarding the application of the rule of law. First, we will refer to some general aspects regarding the content and importance of rule of law concept in democratic societies. Then, taking into account the fact that the law regulates situations that occur in real life, in society, we will discuss the fact that the COVIC 19 pandemic situation generated circumstances which had not been foreseen by the democratic states authorities and this generated an actual global crisis. This crisis affected the rules regarding the good governance. As the pandemic is approaching its end, our societies are not yet prepared to enforce new necessary aspects of the rule of law. Also, we will refer to the fact that the year 2021 was the third year in a row in which WJP Rule of Law® reported that the rule of law scores of several countries have declined rather than improved.

Analysis of Public Emotion and Disseminator-Audience Framework during Outbreak of Public Crisis Events: A case study of Microblog Account Xiake Island

This study crawled the cross-sectional data of the contents and comments from Microblog Account Xiake Island during the outbreak of coronavirus pneumonia as subjects, to examine the deviation and resonance association among affective fluctuations of the Chinese public, media framework, and audiences' cognitive framework. Using SnowNLP to conduct sentiment analysis of text comments, we found that during the outbreak of coronavirus pneumonia, the public spent most of the time in low-intensity negative affectivity, and the average affective propensity in response to individual microblog fluctuated greatly, and the public was easily caught in an emotional frenzy, which reduces the level of trust in government. Through a comparison of public affectivity and related epidemic data, Xiake Island focuses on reporting emotional facts, whose construction of social reality contains obvious emotional trajectories. Clustering analysis of thematic framework by LDA algorithm reveals that in terms of framework, the framework Xiake Island uses resonates to a large degree with the framework users focus on. In terms of the level of concerns over the framework, Xiake Island deviates to a certain extent from the public. This deviation, together with the strategy of focusing on reporting emotional facts, is a discursive strategy adopted by the new mainstream media to seek the reconstruction of cultural leadership. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Institutional Network Relationship of Chinese Public Crisis Governance System-Based on the Quantitative Comparative Analysis of Policies during SARS and COVID-19.

After experiencing many public crisis events, such as SARS in 2003 and COVID-19 in 2020, the Chinese public crisis governance system has been improved from its initial state. The distribution structure and cooperation network among various government departments in China have become more complex. How to accurately clarify the relationship between the various departments in the existing governance system has become an important issue of the Chinese public crisis governance system. Based on the perspective of networked research, this article examines the network relationship between institutions in the Chinese public crisis governance system from the two dimensions of network centrality and network density. Using the bibliometric method to use public policies released in 2003 and 2020 as data samples and the two large-scale institutional reforms in 2003 and 2018 as the time nodes, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of the institutional network relationship of the Chinese public crisis governance system during different periods. The research shows that the network relationship among institutions in the Chinese public crisis governance system has changed from a centralized type to a diverse type; there is a trend of expansion in network relations; the legalization of governance networks is strengthened and the core of the network is transformed into the direct leadership of the Party Committee; and the overall network structure is experiencing a rational evolution.

TAX-B2BREC: Multi-Stage Cascade Downstream Company Recommender System Based on Taxation Data

The public crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has disastrous effects for B2B markets. With the supply chain and trade disrupted, the benefits of the company have been affected to varying degrees. In order to help companies find potential customers and recover the supply chain, we propose a multi-stage cascade downstream company recommender system based on taxation data. The proposed system can recommend potential buyers for upstream companies, which can help upstream companies find new sales channels. This system includes data processing, matching module, ranking module and system deployment. In the match module, we propose a hybrid recall algorithm to generate the candidate enterprises. In the ranking module, we use DCNV2 model to rank the candidate companies. Moreover, the multistage cascade recommendation algorithm achieves better results compared with the traditional algorithm in B2B recommender system. © 2021 IEEE.

Research on the Relationship between Learning Engagement and Learning Completion of Online Learning Students

With the deep integration of the Internet and education, new educational models, such as micro classrooms, large-scale open online courses, and flipped classrooms have gradually appeared. In the information age, online learning has become popular in most countries all over the world, especially in the face of public crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Online learning can effectively connect teachers and students through the Internet. However, the low participation and low cognitive level of e-learning also affect the quality of e-learning, which depends largely on the learning investment of students. Based on selfefficacy theory and exploratory community theory, this paper puts forward the hypothesis that students' e-learning investment affects learning completion and tests the mediating effect of incorporating self-efficacy into students' e-learning investment on learning completion. The results show that the Cronbach's a coefficient is 0.968, which has high reliability. KMO value is 0.880, indicating that data information can be extracted effectively. The three aspects of students' elearning input (behavioral investment, cognitive input, and emotional input) constructed in this paper can significantly improve the learning completion level of students. The results of this study have positive value for understanding the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning, promoting the reform of e-learning methods in universities, and implementing e-learning strategies for students familiar with different e-learning years. © 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Factors of Social Public Crisis Caused by Sudden Major Epidemic-The Enlightenment of "SARS" on Prevention and Control of COVID-19.

To collect and sort out key measures in the process of disposing SARS pathogen in China in 2003 and afterward. Based on the perspective of public crisis management, analyze the main factors that may cause a public crisis in a sudden and important epidemic situation. This paper explores the possible factors that induced public crises during the handling of epidemic events, and then combs the path from public events to public crisis events. We find that urban residents are more sensitive than rural residents, and are prone to cause multiple public crises, which last longer and have greater intensity. Although the duration of public crisis is relatively short and the intensity is relatively low, the importance and urgency of public crisis incident handling and emergency countermeasures formulating cannot be ignored. At the same time, as all levels and departments are pursuing the goal of maximizing their own interests, the contradiction between the individual rationality of each level and each department and the collective rationality of the entire society will inevitably arise. Accelerating the establishment of social contradictions and emergency evolution models and coping mechanisms of the multi-layered and multi-sectoral dynamic gambling, so as to better build a warning and emergency management system of social contradiction and emergency public emergency. Finally, there is a gap in the education of citizens' crisis awareness and response ability. The public generally has poor social alertness, lack of crisis knowledge, low level of public participation in early warning, and inadequate ability of government officials.

Bed-sided short-duration renal replacement therapy provide a possible option to treat non-critical coronavirus disease 2019 in maintenance hemodialysis patients in public health crisis.

HD care may experience great stress with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A modified HD modality named bed-sided short-duration renal replacement therapy (BSRRT) was used in noncritical maintenance HD (MHD) patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in Wuhan due to extreme situation. To determine the safety and efficacy as a substitution for intermittent HD (IHD), we conducted this study. We used the data of 88 noncritical COVID-19 MHD patients collected from 65 medical units at the hospitals in Wuhan, China, from January 1 to March 10, 2020. t-test, Wilcoxon rank sum test, and Fisher exact probability method were used to compare the baseline characteristics, treatment, and death. Log-rank test and Cox regression multivariate analysis was used to compare the survival of noncritical patients who were transferred to BSRRT modality versus those who were continued on the IHD. Univariate analysis showed the level of reported fatigue symptom at present, bilateral lung computed tomography infiltration and steroid treatment differed between the two groups. The outcome of death of the two groups did not show significant differences in univariate analysis (P = .0563). Multivariate Cox regression analysis dialysis showed modality of treatment after COVID-19 diagnosis was not a significant predictor of death (P = .1000). These data suggest that for noncritical COVID-19 MHD patients, the transfer from IHD to BSRRT does not have significant difference in the risk of death compared with IHD group. This finding suggests this modified modality could be an option for the substitution for IHD during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

Mental Health Effects of COVID-19 Pandemia: A Review of Clinical and Psychological Traits.

OBJECTIVE: As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sweeps across the world, it is causing widespread concern, fear and stress, all of which are natural and normal reactions to the changing and uncertain situation that everyone finds themselves in. METHODS: In this general review, we examined the literature about the psychological effects of COVID-19 pandemia. In total 65 papers were reviewed using the Medline computer database. Only publications in English were selected. RESULTS: Children are likely to be experiencing worry, anxiety and fear and older people are also those with underlying health conditions, having been identified as more vulnerable to COVID-19, can be extremely frightening and very fear-inducing. China and several other countries took strict isolation measures. Medical staff and affiliated healthcare workers (staff) are under both physical and psychological pressure. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic is exceptional. Its effect will likely be imprinted on each individual involved. Extensive stressors will emerge or become worsened. Many medical staff workers will be harmfully psychologically affected.

Health Communication Through News Media During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Digital Topic Modeling Approach.

BACKGROUND: In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. METHODS: We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. RESULTS: After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics' themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media's actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.