An Empirical Study on Factors Impacting the Adoption of Digital Technologies in Supply Chain Management and What Blockchain Technology Could Do for the Manufacturing Sector of Bangladesh

This paper employed an integrated model for examining behavioral intention to adopt blockchain technology in the supply chain management of manufacturing industries in Bangladesh. The proposed conceptual model was empirically tested using data collected from 189 supply chain managers working in manufacturing organizations in Bangladesh. The findings suggest that perceived usefulness, trading partners' pressure, and competitive pressure are the most important determinant of behavioral intention. © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

A digital transformation-enabled framework and strategies for public health risk response and governance: China's experience

Purpose: Under uncertain circumstances, digital technologies are taken as digital transformation enablers and driving forces to integrate with medical, healthcare and emergency management research for effective epidemic prevention and control. This study aims to adapt complex systems in emergency management. Thus, a digital transformation-driven and systematic circulation framework is proposed in this study that can utilize the advantages of digital technologies to generate innovative and systematic governance. Design/methodology/approach: Aiming at adapting complex systems in emergency management, a systematic circulation framework based on the interpretive research is proposed in this study that can utilize the advantages of digital technologies to generate innovative and systematic governance. The framework consists of four phases: (1) analysis of emergency management stages, (2) risk identification in the emergency management stages, (3) digital-enabled response model design for emergency management, and (4) strategy generation for digital emergency governance. A case study in China was illustrated in this study. Findings: This paper examines the role those digital technologies can play in responding to pandemics and outlines a framework based on four phases of digital technologies for pandemic responses. After the phase-by-phase analysis, a digital technology-enabled emergency management framework, titled "Expected digital-enabled emergency management framework (EDEM framework)” was adapted and proposed. Moreover, the social risks of emergency management phases are identified. Then, three strategies for emergency governance and digital governance from the three perspectives, namely "Strengthening weaknesses for emergency response,” "Enhancing integration for collaborative governance,” and "Engaging foundations for emergency management” that the government can adopt them in the future, fight for public health emergency events. Originality/value: The novel digital transformation-driven systematic circulation framework for public health risk response and governance was proposed. Meanwhile, an "Expected digital-enabled emergency management framework (EDEM model)” was also proposed to achieve a more effective empirical response for public health risk response and governance and contribute to studies about the government facing the COVID-19 pandemic effectively. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Organizational resilience under COVID-19: the role of digital technology in R&D investment and performance

Purpose: This study aims at the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, which had an unprecedented negative impact on the Chinese economy, with firms being affected most. Firms differ in terms of their specific internal environment, shaping their ability to respond to the outbreak, so the impact may also vary. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper Chinese listed firms are selected as samples to investigate the mediating effect of prior digital technology on the relationship between R&D (research and development) investment (funds and staff) and firm performance during the epidemic. Firm size and diversification are then introduced as moderating variables to explore the conditional mediating effect of digital technology. Findings: The results indicate that the higher the firm's prior R&D investment, the higher its digital technology level, and thus the stronger its resistance to the epidemic. Moreover, compared with large-scale firms, small-scale firms have the advantage of strategic flexibility to technological changes, which can help them accumulate experience from R&D activities for digital transformation, thus attenuating the negative impact of the COVID-19 on firm performance. Finally, the results also show that digital technology mediates more strongly between R&D investment and firm performance in diversified firms than in centralized firms. Originality/value: The study builds a mediation model to reveal the process mechanism through which R&D investment affects firm performance via digital technology. Firm size and diversification are then innovatively introduced as situational factors to build the moderated mediation model, which opens up a new perspective for understanding the effect of firm internal factors on the relationship between R&D investment, digital transformation and firm performance. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The role of digital social innovations to address SDGs: A systematic review

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the search for solutions to complex problems associated with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Main actors are turning to Digital Social Innovations (DSI), defined as collaborative innovations where enterprises, users, and communities collaborate using digital technologies to promote solutions at scale and speed, connecting innovation, the social world, and digital ecosystems to reach the 2030 Agenda. This study aims to identify how digital transformations and social innovations solve social problems and address SDGs. We conducted a systematic review combining a bibliometric study and a content analysis focusing on opportunities and threats impacting these fields. We expect that our findings advance the understanding of digital social innovations and different stakeholders' roles in promoting social advancements. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Earbuds, smartphones, and music. Spiritual care and existential changes in COVID-19 times.

Rooted in a Durkheimian functionalist reading of religion, in this article, we present and discuss the results of a scoping study of on-line sources on the delivery of spiritual care during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Spiritual care highlights the bond between healthcare and religion/spirituality, particularly within the growing paradigm of holistic and humane care. Spiritual care is also an area where the importance of the physical presence of receivers and providers is exceptionally important, as a classic anthropological understanding of the religious ritual would maintain. Three themes were found, which speak to changes brought about by the pandemic. These revolve around disembodiment, solitude, and technology in spiritual care, of religious and non-religious nature. A fourth theme encapsulates the ambivalence in the experience of spiritual care delivery, whereby distant and virtual care could only partially compensate for the impossibility of physical presence. On the one hand, we draw from anthropology of the ritual and phenomenology to make the case for the inalienability of intercorporeality in being there for the other. On the other hand, relying on digital religious studies and post-human theories, we argue for an opening up to new ways of conceptualising the body, being there, and being human.

How digitalization reinvented entrepreneurial resilience during COVID-19.

The emergence of new digital technologies has transformed entrepreneurship and, very likely, enabled many new and established ventures to avoid bankruptcy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital technologies are key to identifying, evaluating and exploiting opportunities, scaling a venture's competitiveness, improving efficiency and innovating, especially during uncertain times. We explore how digital technologies reinvented entrepreneurial resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and distill the digital artifacts, platforms and infrastructures used by entrepreneurs to demonstrate entrepreneurial resilience. We analyzed 42 reflective interviews featuring successful entrepreneurs from How I Built This "Resilience Series" podcast that explore how entrepreneurs responded to the COVID-19 crisis. We adopted a systematic approach to identify and describe the behaviors, actions and strategies related to digitalization to reinvent the business in the uncertain and resource-constrained context of COVID-19. The data analysis yielded thirteen first-order codes categorized into five second-order themes: creative digital pivoting, digital infrastructures, social impact through digital technology, burdens to digital adoption, and growth through digitalization. These second-order themes reveal to function as both enablers and barriers to entrepreneurial resilience in this adverse context. Our exploratory analysis suggests how digitalization influences entrepreneurial resilience.

Lessons Learned from the Lessons Learned in Public Health during the First Years of COVID-19 Pandemic.

(1) Objectives: to investigate the main lessons learned from the public health (PH) response to COVID-19, using the global perspective endorsed by the WHO pillars, and understand what countries have learned from their practical actions. (2) Methods: we searched for articles in PubMed and CINAHL from 1 January 2020 to 31 January 2022. 455 articles were included. Inclusion criteria were PH themes and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. One hundred and forty-four articles were finally included in a detailed scoping review. (3) Findings: 78 lessons learned were available, cited 928 times in the 144 articles. Our review highlighted 5 main lessons learned among the WHO regions: need for continuous coordination between PH institutions and organisations (1); importance of assessment and evaluation of risk factors for the diffusion of COVID-19, identifying vulnerable populations (2); establishment of evaluation systems to assess the impact of planned PH measures (3); extensive application of digital technologies, telecommunications and electronic health records (4); need for periodic scientific reviews to provide regular updates on the most effective PH management strategies (5). (4) Conclusion: lessons found in this review could be essential for the future, providing recommendations for an increasingly flexible, fast and efficient PH response to a healthcare emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Innovating agri-food business models after the Covid-19 pandemic: The impact of digital technologies on the value creation and value capture mechanisms.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of business models innovation (BMI) empowered by digital technologies and activated as a response to Covid-19 crisis. In fact, during the crisis numerous digital redesigns of businesses occurred to pursue both continuity and competitive advantage. Among these, the food retail sector has undergone under the pressure of the crisis intense digital changes, which, however, have not yet been investigated under the theoretical lens of BMI. To fill this gap, the paper analyzes the digital actions taken during the pandemic crisis by two large food retailers, namely Walmart and Carrefour. Covering a wide temporal interval of the pandemic evolution and reviewing multiple geographical markets, the authors interpreted the grocer's digital responses to the crisis in terms of innovation in value creation and capture mechanisms. As a result, three phases of digital BMI have been reconstructed, each characterized by specific mechanisms of value creation and capture experienced by the two grocers during the pandemic. Leveraging these findings, the paper proposes a model capable of defining how digital BMI takes place in response to crises. Results broaden theoretical knowledge and practical suggestions on digital BMI in terms of enabling factors, actionable value mechanisms, and future business opportunities.

Digitalizing social work education: preparing students to engage with twenty-first century practice need

This study, designed to surface student conceptions of digital development throughout their professional training, concluded mid-2019. Whilst mentioned in brief in a previous publication, this paper reports the work in full. The learning from it is important to formulating a response to practice changes driven by Covid19. Practice shifts that forced the profession to do social work at a distance, at speed, and largely through a screen. While not to dismiss efforts to adjust to the restrictions put in place to mitigate the spread of the virus, the lack of digital capabilities across the profession meant that the pivot to online practices presented significant and avoidable challenges. Informed by student descriptions of an educational experience devoid of digital development, this paper offers a solution. The ‘Digitalising Social Work Education Framework' provides a context in which to review the facilitation of digital capabilities development. It is a means to ensuring that curriculum design, content, and delivery equips students to use technologies for their learning and in practice. It avoids reducing digital professionalism to a set of technical skills and promotes the need to engage with the realities of sociotechnical practices, including those that erode people's privacy, rights and freedom from interference.

Digital transformation of professional healthcare practices: fitness seeking across a rugged value landscape

Digital transformation (DT) is typically described as a strategic, top-down initiative where new digital technologies fundamentally disrupt an organisation's structure, procedures, and processes to enhance its value proposition. We propose a middle-range theory which highlights that DT of professional practices in healthcare follows a different path. To build this theory, we transpose the metaphor of a "fitness landscape” from evolutionary biology to a professional healthcare context to build an intermediate conceptualisation, which is then refined through an empirical study. Our theory highlights that external events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, changing patient behaviours or the availability of new digital resources, transform the "value landscape” upon which healthcare professionals create and deliver healthcare services to patients. Empowered by their professional autonomy and driven by their service orientation, healthcare professionals search for new paths and peaks for value creation and delivery across a rugged landscape. As digital resources are leveraged, new value propositions in practice emerge, and professional healthcare practices are digitally transformed. © The Operational Research Society 2023.

Social Connection when Physically Isolated: Family Experiences in Using Video Calls

Digital (video) calls have become a significant tool during the challenging times marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article focuses on the perceived functionality of video calls for maintaining social contacts and overcoming loneliness in celebrating family festivities limited by physical distance policies. The qualitative study conducted at the end of 2021 in Latvia and Spain examines families' cultural socialisation via digital tools and, based on data obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews, assesses the users' digital experiences in celebrating Christmas and the New Year from retrospective and prospective standpoints. The obtained data revealed that although digital interactions were acknowledged as an alternative means for ensuring togetherness, preserving and facilitating emotional connection, and experiencing a feeling of belonging and shared identity, they were perceived as the context of exception. The findings complement existing studies that the pandemic contributed to bridging the digital gap among generations with coordinated and negotiated conceptions of the functionality of digital tools. Video calls ensured a sense of social and emotional connectedness and inspired the appearance of virtual celebration ideas. © 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter.

Phygital technologies and environments for breakthrough innovation in customers' and citizens' journey. A critical literature review and future agenda

Digital transformation is radically impacting on society and market by disclosing unexpected implications for scholars and practitioners. As enablers of a pervasive innovation process, digital transformation relies on different categories of digital technologies with a breakthrough profile. Among them, phygital arises as a promising topic defined as the use of technology to bridge the digital with the physical world with the purpose of providing a unique interactive experience for the user. Due the actuality of the issue, the literature on phygital is fragmented and far from a full understanding of its meaning and implications. Moving from these premises, our research attempts to analyse the current state of the debate about the promising role of phygital environment to identify how digital technologies are transforming physical world. At this aim, a critical literature review is performed to identify how the customer experience is undergoing a renaissance due to the Covid-19 pandemic that forced organisations to improve the customer experiences. Our findings allow to identify main trends in the academic debate as grouped into five main clusters, related to the adoption of phygital technologies for: i) Marketing and Consumers' Behaviour;ii) Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Urban Development;iii) Education and Learning;iv) Social issues and Politics;v) Technical and Legal Issues. These areas are linked together showing how the different phygital environments lead to the provisions of novel and immersive experience for customers involved into strategic industries such as retail, tourism and education. Directions for future research and management implications are finally provided. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.

Disruptive Technologies in Engineering Education: A Case Study

Post-COVID-19 has shaped the educational system in the world particularly in university engineering education by using a digital technology platform such as a learning management system (LMS) with an embedded virtual environment. However students and lecturers rarely adopt and use this technology but rather prefer other platforms such as WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. that are not owned or controlled by the University management because they are not originally intended for teaching and learning even though they have the educational capability. This paper seeks to verify the extent to which disruptive technologies influence engineering university education. Much literature has investigated the role of disruptive technologies in recent studies but none of them related it to the context of university engineering education in Nigeria. Activity Theory and Expansive Learning methods were used to analyse the data obtained through survey questions and interviews on the respondent's actual practices. Out of 450 respondents involved in the studies. The survey showed that respondents tend to endorse the Disruptive Innovation theory as the respondents justify the reasons for adopting their preferred choice of technologies rather than following the designer's original intentions for inventing them. The survey questions and interview results showed that WhatsApp,Zoom,Google form and Twitter are the five topmost learning and teaching disruptive technologies frequently used by students and lecturers instead of LMS because they are easily accessible and convenient. The survey revealed that learners use a narrow range of technologies to support learning rather than those provided by their university management. Students and lecturers are not adopting LMS to support learning and teaching usage. The use of other learning technologies outside LMS has hindered the monitoring and evaluation of online education effectively by the University management © 2022 IEEE.

Adoption of digital technologies amidst COVID-19 and privacy breach in India and Bangladesh

This article problematizes the institutional void caused by the lack of accountable digital regulation in India and Bangladesh regarding the adoption of public health-related digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from literature review and preliminary interviews illustrate an emerged pattern in these countries that intersect governmentality and materiality with an absence of oversight. The findings further indicate an absence of privacy laws that leave citizens vulnerable to privacy breach. As surveillance becomes a social norm, authorities appear to turn a blind eye toward human rights while public remain unaware and uninformed. The article recommends that consumer-centric governmentality is needed to ensure the privacy and protection of consumers and citizens in India and Bangladesh.

Ethical Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Japanese Perspective.

This article focuses on how Japan experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. It delineates the various challenges the country faced and the measures the national government took to stop the spread of the infection. The article begins with the author's personal experience of COVID-19. The second section explains how the Japanese government lacked the legal sanctions to enforce a state of emergency. The third section deals with the current pandemic response as characterized by the increased use of digital technologies to control the spread of the virus. I argue that the lack of effective governance hampered Japan's timely use of digital technologies. The fourth section will touch on the issues created by the rapid spread of the infection and an increase in the hospitalization rate, focusing on intensive care unit triage and the ethical debates that ensued in Japan. The fifth section discusses the pandemic from the perspective of disaster preparedness and management, exploring the ways the pandemic responses share ethical challenges with responses to other disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons.

Family businesses in tourism - the use of digital technologies in times of uncertainty and crisis

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of digital technologies on the promotion of tourist offer from the perspective of family businesses. The paper tries to provide a better understanding of the factors that determine the use of digital technologies in the family tourism business, both in the modern digital world and in times of uncertainty and crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The survey method was used in the realization of the research. Data were collected using a stratified random sample of 86 tourism providers in Montenegro and analyzed by using SEM models, logistic regression and descriptive statistics. Findings The results showed that the demographic characteristics of the respondents were the least important factors in the analysis, while factors that significantly affected the use of digital technologies in Montenegrin tourism included the nature of future tourism trends perceived by respondents, crisis and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, participants' perceptions, attitudes and understanding of the specificities of digital technologies and benefits they offer to tourists, perceived from the perspective of the family business representative. Furthermore, the results of logistic regression revealed that pandemic had stronger consequences on micro and small enterprises, compared to those imposed on medium-sized firms. These impacts relate to changes in organization and redesign of workflows, altered communication from traditional to digital and increased importance of business innovations. On the other hand, the increased significance of integration of marketing channels for multiple target segments, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, was stronger pronounced in medium-sized businesses compared to micro and small ones. Originality/value The results obtained may serve the holders of the tourist offer, managers and decision-makers when making decisions on the imposition of digital technologies in tourism, in order to secure global reach business, multi-channel tourist interaction, cost-saving and being ahead of competitors. This enables an integrated analysis that forms the basis for further creation of tourism and marketing policies at the individual and collective level to attract tourists and strengthen Montenegro's competitiveness as a destination.

Mental Health Issues Associated With COVID-19 Among the Elderly Population: A Narrative Review.

Since its discovery in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been affecting humanity in economic, social, physical, and psychological manner. During COVID-19, the older population needs special consideration since they have a greater risk of developing serious illnesses. We used a narrative review approach to identify the relevant articles. PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were searched for the following keywords: (mental health OR mental illness(es) OR anxiety OR depression OR irritability) AND (elderly OR older people OR aged 60 years or more) AND (Covid-19 OR pandemic OR chronic diseases) AND (mitigate OR manage). In the initial search, we found 948 articles related to our search string, and only 33 studies were included in this narrative review. The results demonstrated that the elderly population is more prone to mental health issues associated with COVID-19. This narrative review also reported that loneliness, stress, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and suicidal ideation symptoms are experienced by the elderly during the pandemic. Our results also demonstrate that interventions, such as community activities through social interactions, and the use of digital technologies could improve the quality of life of older people and help in the mitigation and management of the adverse effects of COVID-19.