Old Normal, New Normal, or Renewed Normal: How COVID-19 Changed Human Resource Development

This chapter wants to shed light on the consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic had for human resource development (HRD) in organizations and in the labour market. We intend to compare three situations: Old Normal (before February 2020), New Normal (between March 2022 and October 2021), and Renewed Normal (since October 2021). Crucially, in organizations, work was mostly face to face in the Old Normal, remote in the New Normal, and there is a tendency for some hybrid form to be installed in the Renewed Normal. We compare the three phases in terms of four aspects of HRD and within virtual development relations, namely: work environment, competences, training, and skills. The chapter presents results from a literature review in SCOPUS database. We conclude that COVID-19 changed HRD, because technology changed the environment and, therefore, new competences were required. Therefore, a new form of training was also required, which, when in practice, originated new skills. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

The Portuguese Case of Covid-19 as a case of Knowledge Management

There are many ways in which it is possible to look at the impact of Covid-19 in societies. For us it is essentially a crisis of knowledge. First, we lacked a vaccine;second, we lacked the ability to manage our societies to minimize the costs of not having vaccines;third, even when the vaccine was developed, problems arose on how and when to implement it. In another paper we discussed the situation on Portugal in the third semester of 2020 (Tome, Gromova, Hatch, 2020). Here we extend and update the analysis. We use a model based on technology, people and processes (Edwards 2011). We assume that there are several generic questions related to KM that explain the crisis, namely the following: 1) lack of basic scientific medical knowledge, 2) lack of social knowledge, 3) lack of information and difficulties in informing policies;4) lack of trust;5) relation between technology, people and processes;6) competence and incompetency and finally 7) management of knowledge and information by politicians. We also assume there are several questions that need to be considered specifically about Portugal namely the following: 1) how big is the crisis? 2) how is the crisis explained?;3) what kind of crisis is it ?;4) what is the economic explanation to the "new normal"?;5) what policies should be developed ?;6) what will happen in politics? 7) what change will happen ? We point out that in Portugal, the massive crisis about Covid-19 happened in January and February 2021 (Worldmeter, 2021). If the cause of the descent in February is easy to find - lockdown imposed since January 16, the causes of the massive surge in January remain to be found and it is around the quest for those causes, and within the TPP framework, that we write this paper.

Development of emergent knowledge strategies and new dynamic capabilities for business education in a time of crisis

The current pandemic is, above all, a crisis of knowledge—Humanity had to find a vac-cine, and now we are not sure how to behave socially to minimize the pandemic bad effects. For organizations, this situation requires an update in the reflection regarding both the strategy and the actions that should be performed. Therefore, the current crisis requires new ways of apply-ing knowledge strategies and dealing with dynamic capabilities. We first analyze the two questions (knowledge strategies and dynamic capabilities) in abstract and general terms, and then we specifically focus on business education during the COVID-19 crisis. We conclude that COVID-19 creates a need for all knowledge strategies in terms of business education. Data, information, knowledge, and wisdom will be needed;above all, it requires the Unknown-Knowns, which is the basis for Knowledge Sharing, and the Unknown-Unknowns that base Knowledge Exploration because both Knowledge Exploitation and Knowledge Acquisition are strategies business schools use to perform in times of crisis. They are more difficult to implement because both the Known-Knowns and the Known-Unknowns are less valuable to solve a crisis like this one: all this will result in “agile universities”, which will be (and already are) those that will use the right strategies and the right dynamic capabilities and will have better results. The paper is original because we link Knowledge Management and Human Resources Development Concepts to generate a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the organizational behavior about a very specific problem—business education—in a very specific time of the COVID-19 crisis. The limits of the paper relate to the evolution of society itself;we do not know when the crisis will end, and we are not sure how much of the “new normal” will remain in the “post-COVID-19” situation. The topic and analysis are of interest for practitioners because daily, they experience how their reality changed and their need to adapt, yet they do not know how. This topic and analysis are also of interest to scholars because science is based on questions, explaining and providing ways to improve one’s reality. COVID-19 has shown us, dramatically and uniquely, the need for new solutions in times of peace. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (R&Ai) perceptions of consumers and producers: An international comparison among Portugal and Spain

In this paper we study the perceptions of producers and consumers regarding Artificial Intelligence (IA) and robots and perform an empirical study to Portugal and Spain. We base ourselves in current theory about the phenomena and construct to questionnaires, one for each side of the market;we apply the two questionnaires in Portugal and in Spain. We use factor analysis and clusters analysis to obtain our results. We conclude that the consumers have a positive perception about the use of IAs, with an interesting limitation – people, in Portugal and in Spain do not believe robots will ever have emotions. We also conclude that the producers have a rather optimistic view about the use of robots, namely they believe AI and robots will simplify the hard tasks and create more spice for real creative actions by the workers. Put together, these results show that in Iberia the basic forces on the AI market have an optimistic view about the phenomena. This idea, which is a bit at odds with some discourse served by the media, which may be therefore as alarmist, is a sign of hope and should be taken into account by the public powers, particularly in these Covid-19 times. This study is small in size and should be repeated in a larger scale soon, preferably in 2021. © ECIAIR 2020.All right reserved.