Legitimacy versus efficiency: implementation of in-person work in Japanese companies during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThis study aims to examine how companies persuaded their employees to be present at offices during the COVID-19 pandemic and how remote and non-remote work practices affected employee performance. Design/methodology/approachFirm strategies are assumed to follow the principles of legitimacy and efficiency. However, these principles are often contradictory and incompatible. This study explored how companies legitimized non-remote work during the pandemic in Japan, and how in-person work practices affected individual employee productivity. The authors conducted a survey in the country, and the collected data was quantitatively analyzed. FindingsOn the basis of our empirical study on institutional work providing rationales for maintaining existing business practices, the authors found that Japanese companies often used institutional logics that included the inevitability of employees' obedience to company policy, the lack of employees' digital resources at home and the necessity of face-to-face customer dealing to legitimize their non-adoption of telework, even amid the emergency. The findings also indicate that the adoption of in-person work was negatively related to individual employee performance. Originality/valueThe current study aims to make a theoretical contribution to the literature on institutional maintenance and institutional work, which, till now, has only focused on institutional change rather than institutional maintenance. Second, few studies have empirically investigated the contradiction between legitimacy and efficiency, although the literature on organizational legitimacy assumes that individuals and organizations are not always rational.

Sparse Group Quantitative PCR Testing by Belief Propagation

In a standard group test setup, the result of each pooled test is either positive or negative. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method of making billions of copies of DNA from a small amount of DNA sample. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted public health worldwide. Massive population PCR testing allows the isolation of infected individuals and the pandemic control. Quantitative PCR (q-PCR) test provides more information about infected samples than the standard group test. In this paper, we model the q-PCR and demonstrate group q-PCR testing with sparse test matrices and by belief propagation. © 2022 IEEE.