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The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

Until recently, the business environment was characterized by a world in which nations were more connected than ever before. Unfortunately, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has virtually ended the borderless and globalized world we were accustomed to. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic at a news conference in Geneva on March 11, 2020. The multifaceted nature of this invisible virus is impacting the world at many levels, and this unprecedented pandemic may best be characterized as an economic and health war against humanity. More international cooperation is crucial for effectively dealing with the present pandemic (and future pandemics) because all nations are vulnerable, and it is highly unlikely that any pandemic would affect only one country. Therefore, this case study takes a sociological approach, examining various social institutions and cultural facets (i.e., government, press freedom, information technology [IT] infrastructure, healthcare systems, and institutional collectivism) to understand how South Korea is handling the crisis while drawing important implications for other countries. All aspects of how Korea is handling COVID-19 may not be applicable to other countries, such as those with fewer IT infrastructures and less institutional collectivism. However, its methods still offer profound insights into how countries espousing democratic values rooted in openness and transparency to both domestic and worldwide communities can help overcome the current challenge. As such, the authors believe that Korea's innovative approach and experience can inform other nations dealing with COVD-19, while also leading to greater international collaboration for better preparedness when such pandemics occur in the future. This case study also considers implications for both public policy and organization, and the authors pose critical questions and offer practical solutions for dealing with the current pandemic.

This paper examines the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 and the policy response in African countries.

This study uses discourse analysis to analyse the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 in Africa.

The findings reveal that African countries have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and the effect was more severe for African regions compared to other regions. The rising pandemic affected social interaction and economic activities through the imposed social distancing policies that have different levels of strictness in several African countries

The implication of the findings is that social policies can affect the social and economic well-being of citizens. Secondly, the coronavirus outbreak has revealed how a biological crisis can be transformed to a sociological subject. The most important sociological consequence of the coronavirus outbreak for African citizens is the creation of social anxiety among families and households in the region. The outbreak has also shown how vulnerable African societies are in facing health hazards. Policymakers should enforce social policies that unite communities in bad times, to reduce social anxiety.

This is the first paper that explore the socio-economic impact of coronavirus and the policy response in African countries.

The world has been witnessing a new dreadful disease since the latter part of 2019. The disease known as the novel coronavirus disease often referred to as COVID-19 originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in the Hubei province and has since spread across the world resulting in the World Health Organisation to declare it a global pandemic. Whilst it appears obvious that the pandemic continues to generate several impacts, knowledge of the true idea, nature and extent of the impacts is scanty, partly because the disease is novel, ongoing and an antidote is yet to be found for it as well as the fact that no or little systematic studies have been conducted into the impacts and the results codified. This study, therefore, explores the global overview of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 based on evidence in the literature. The chapter found that several measures such as imposition of partial or total lockdowns, social distancing and stay-at-home policies, wearing of face masks and the use of gloves and hand sanitizers have been instituted to contain the pandemic since its outbreak. Apart from 4,766,468 infections with 318,201 deaths, which had occurred as at 19 May 2020 and are still counting, the measures instituted have resulted in increase in domestic energy consumption, generation of waste pollution, contraction in production, loss of income and jobs, disruption in market activities and depreciation in asset prices and values across the various sectors of the world's economy, increases in domestic violence and limited access to health services among others. Conversely, the pandemic has partly resulted in positive outcomes such as reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and boost in the operations of the ITC and other allied industries. However, in broad terms, it is a huge threat to sustainable development (SD) and gains made in that regard over the years are eroding. Furthermore, although there have been interventions from governments, United Nations and other international development organisations to ease the adverse impacts, more such interventions and efforts will be required to put the SD agenda on track.

The purpose of this paper is as follows: the first objective is to help illuminate part of the international archival sector’s initial responses to the crisis at its commencement, particularly by thematically analyzing the announcements made by national archives, which are arguably the leading archival institutions in their respective countries and the second objective is to help establish a joint contemporary understanding and historical snapshot of the positions of national archives during the first few months of the pandemic.

A comparative thematic analysis of national archives’ first formal public-facing COVID-19 announcements, released between March and May 2020, is conducted, specifically from the official websites of Australia’s National Archives of Australia, Canada’s Library and Archives Canada, New Zealand’s Archives New Zealand, the United Kingdom’s (UK) The National Archives and the United States of America’s (USA) National Archives.

Notwithstanding their diverse contexts, all the announcements thematically converge in discussing the closure of physical locations and spaces, as well as maintaining (reduced) services and offering remote access. Another theme appearing across most announcements is the concern for the protection of the health, welfare and safety of their communities. Additional themes featured in some of the announcements include considerations about the handling of paper records and physical materials, the removal and/or return of materials and the provision of further COVID-19 information. Unique themes appearing only once include steps for enacting precautions, furloughing staff and reopening and post-pandemic planning.

Limitations to the article’s purview include its small sample size, focus on mainly English-speaking contexts and analysis of only official websites. Nevertheless, this sample arguably includes some of the major and leading archival institutions, not only in their respective countries but also internationally, namely, two national archives from North America (Canada and the USA), one from the wider European region (the UK) and two from Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). Further studies could expand the cohort size, diversify the focus for instance by analyzing social media postings and metrics and extend the timeframe.

This study could be of interest to archival academics and professionals, as well as library and information science scholars and practitioners, public health researchers and policymakers, cultural studies scholars and historians, exploring international and intersectional initiatives that have informed or are currently informing, approaches to and understandings of this pandemic and other similar health crises. It is further hoped that this study will humbly show support and supply solidarity with the wider archival community as it continues responding to and dealing with COVID-19.

Capturing and analyzing aspects of national archives’ communication strategies related to the coronavirus pandemic is a topic of interest, not only for contemporary attempts for dealing with and understanding the crisis but also as a historical snapshot of their responses at this particular point in time.

By contributing to ongoing conversations about the coronavirus pandemic, this study provides the beginning of an analysis of the international archival sector’s initial interventions within it. As the first article in the archival literature on this topic, a baseline and point of reference are established for other studies that will hopefully follow on this topic. In these ways, it can also contribute to debates on how archives and other cultural memory institutions including libraries, museums and galleries, have reacted to the coronavirus pandemic and their resulting communication strategies and impacts upon their institutions, missions, collections, services and communities.

The study aims to examine the role of health-care supply chain management during the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-section of 42 selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

The study used cross-sectional robust least square regression for parameter estimates.

The results confirmed the N-shaped relationship between the health-care logistics performance index (HLPI) and COVID-19 cases. It implies that initially HLPI increases along with an increase in COVID-19 cases. Later down, it decreases COVID-19 cases by providing continued access to medical devices and personal protective equipment. Again, it increases due to resuming economic activities across countries.

The continuing health-care supply chain is crucial to minimize COVID-19 cases. The international support from the developed world in providing health-care equipment, debt resettlement and resolving regional conflicts is deemed desirable to escape the SSA countries from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The importance of the health-care supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic is evident in the forecasting estimates, which shows that from August 2021 to April 2022, increasing the health-care supply chain at their third-degree level would reduce coronavirus registered cases. The results conclude that SSA countries required more efforts to contain coronavirus cases by thrice increasing their health-care logistics supply chain.

The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which started in late December 2019, has spread to more than 200 countries. As no vaccine is yet available for this pandemic, government and health agencies are taking draconian steps to contain it. This pandemic is also trending on social media, particularly on Twitter. The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the general public reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak on Twitter.

This study conducts a thematic analysis of COVID-19 tweets through VOSviewer to examine people’s reactions related to the COVID-19 outbreak in the world. Moreover, sequential pattern mining (SPM) techniques are used to find frequent words/patterns and their relationship in tweets.

Seven clusters (themes) were found through VOSviewer: Cluster 1 (green): public sentiments about COVID-19 in the USA. Cluster 2 (red): public sentiments about COVID-19 in Italy and Iran and a vaccine, Cluster 3 (purple): public sentiments about doomsday and science credibility. Cluster 4 (blue): public sentiments about COVID-19 in India. Cluster 5 (yellow): public sentiments about COVID-19’s emergence. Cluster 6 (light blue): public sentiments about COVID-19 in the Philippines. Cluster 7 (orange): Public sentiments about COVID-19 US Intelligence Report. The most frequent words/patterns discovered with SPM were “COVID-19,” “Coronavirus,” “Chinese virus” and the most frequent and high confidence sequential rules were related to “Coronavirus, testing, lockdown, China and Wuhan.”

The methodology can be used to analyze the opinions/thoughts of the general public on Twitter and to categorize them accordingly. Moreover, the categories (generated by VOSviewer) can be correlated with the results obtained with pattern mining techniques.

This study has a significant socio-economic impact as Twitter offers content posting and sharing to billions of users worldwide.

According to the authors’ best knowledge, this may be the first study to carry out a thematic analysis of COVID-19 tweets at a glance and mining the tweets with SPM to investigate how people reacted to the COVID-19 outbreak on Twitter.

The authors present the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on community lifelines. The state machinery has several departments to secure essential lifelines during disasters and epidemics. Many countries have formed national disaster management authorities to deal with manmade and natural disasters. Typical lifelines include food, water, safety and security, continuity of services, medicines and healthcare equipment, gas, oil and electricity supplies, telecommunication services, transportation means and education system. Supply chain systems are often affected by disasters, which should have alternative sources and routes. Doctors, nurses and medics are front-line soldiers against diseases during pandemics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how much we all are connected yet unprepared for natural disasters. Political leaders prioritize infrastructures, education but overlook the health sector. During the recent pandemic, developed countries faced more mortalities, fatalities and casualties than developing countries. This work surveys the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health, energy, environment, industry, education and food supply lines.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused 7% reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during global lockdowns. In addition, COVID-19 has affected social fabric, behaviors, cultures and official routines. Around 2.84 bn doses have been administrated, with approximately 806 m people (10.3% of the world population) are fully vaccinated around the world to date. Most developed vaccines are being evaluated for new variants like alpha, beta, gamma, epsilons and delta first detected in the UK, South Africa, Brazil, USA and India. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors in society, yet this paper critically reviews the impact of COVID-19 on health and energy lifelines.

This paper critically reviews the health and energy lifelines during pandemic COVID-19 and explains how these essential services were interrupted.

This paper critically reviews the health and energy lifelines during pandemic COVID-19 and explains how these essential services were interrupted.

Signs saturate and surround society. This article illuminates the significant roles played by documentation within the context of the coronavirus pandemic. It centres, what it terms as, “COVID-19 signage” as essential extensions of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) into society. It posits that this signage helps materialize, mediate and articulate the pandemic from an unseen phenomenon into tangible objects with which people see and interact.

This article presents a documentary typology of COVID-19 signage to provide a conceptual framework in which to situate, approach and analyse this diverse documentation and its implications for social life and traffic. Further, this article offers a case study of Malta's COVID-19 signage that helped materialize, mediate and articulate the pandemic across the European island nation during its national lockdown in the first half of 2020. This case study helps contextualize these signs and serves as a dual contemporary and historical overview of their creation, implementation and use.

The coronavirus pandemic cannot be seen with the naked eye. It is, in many respects, an abstraction. Documents enable the virus to be seen and the pandemic to be an experienced reality. Specifically, COVID-19 signage materializes the disease and pandemic into tangible items that individuals interact with and see on a daily basis as they navigate society. From personal to environmental to community signs, these documents have come to mediate social life and articulate COVID-19 during this extraordinary health crisis. A material basis of a shared “pandemic social culture” is consequently established by and through this signage and its ubiquity.

This article can serve as a point of departure for analyses of other kinds of COVID-19 signage in various contexts. It can serve as an anchor or example for other investigations into what other signs were used, including why, when and how they were produced, designed, formatted, implemented, enforced, altered and/or removed. For instance, it could be used for comparative studies between different NPIs and their associated signage, or of the signage appearing between different cities or countries or even the differences in signage at various political and socio-temporal points of the pandemic.

It is dually hoped that this article's documentary typology, and historical snapshot, of COVID-19 signage could help inform how current and future NPIs into society are or can be used to mitigate the coronavirus or other potential health crises as well as serve as both a contemporary and historical snapshot of some of the immediate and early responses to the pandemic.

This documentary typology can be applied to approaches and analyses of other kinds of COVID-19 signage and related documentation. By serving as a conceptual framework in which situate, approach and analyse these documents, it is hoped that this article can help create a sense of clarity in reflections on sign-saturated environments as well as be practically employed for examining and understanding the effective implementation of NPIs in this pandemic and other health crises.

Introducing immunity or vaccine passports is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that governments are considering to exempt immune, vaccinated or otherwise risk-free individuals from lockdowns and other public health restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. The primary objective of these documents would be to begin reopening societies, restarting economies and returning to a pre-pandemic normalcy. This article aims to present the start of a conceptual documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research, considerations and conversations about their potential roles, impacts and implications.

Inspired by Paula A. Treichler's argument for the importance of theoretical thought for untangling the socio-cultural phenomena of epidemics, and drawing upon interdisciplinary theories of documentation, identity and public health, combined with recent news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, this article provides a contemporary overview and conceptual analysis of emerging documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification involving immunity or vaccine passports.

Three major interconnected objectives could be fulfilled by immunity passports. First, they would establish and materialize an official identity of COVID-19 immune for people possessing the formal document. Second, they would serve as material evidence establishing and verifying individuals' immunity, vaccination or risk-free status from the coronavirus that would, in term, determine and regulate their movements and other privileges. Third, they would create tangible links between individuals and governments' official or recognized identity category of COVID-19 immune. Immunity passports would, therefore, help enable and enforce governmental authority and power by situating individuals within documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification.

In the expanding interdisciplinary literature on COVID-19 immunity passports, sometimes also called certificates, licenses, or passes, there appears to be only minimal reference to their documentary instantiations, whether physical, digital, and/or hybrid documents. As yet, there is not any specific documentary approach to or analysis of immunity passports as kinds of documentation. A documentary approach helps to illuminate and emphasize the materiality of and ontological considerations concerning the coronavirus pandemic and its associated kinds of immunity or vaccination.

By beginning an exploration of what makes immunity passports thinkable as a public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, this article illuminates these health and identity documents' material implications for, and effects on, individuals and societies. This article, therefore, helps shed light on what immunity passports reveal about the complicated and contested intersections of identity, documentation, public health and socio-political control and discipline.

This article contributes the start of a documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research and conversations about them.