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Micro and small enterprises (MSE) play a critical role in the Swiss economy but had no meaningfully adopted working from home (WFH) policy before the COVID-19 crisis. The timing of the study’s data collection allowed a unique assessment of Swiss MSEs’ adoption of WFH enabled by the adoption of digital technologies due to the first government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown. The study also set out to assess the permanence of any changes in the adoption of WFH by MSEs after initial government COVID-19 restrictions ended.

The study uses a threefold theoretical framework combining social, technical and spatial dimensions. Data were collected via telephone interviews. The utilised sampling frame included 153,000 small businesses with 4–49 employees, and the realised sample for the study was 503 interviews with MSE owners and managing directors (MDs).

The Swiss government’s COVID-19 crisis lockdown policies accelerated the digital transformation of work by employees in Swiss MSEs by increasing the number of employees WFH. However, the number of MSEs with WFH employees decreased after the first lockdown ended. Small business leadership is an important influence on the persistence of any increases in WFH.

The data collection uniquely captures the effects of externally driven digital transformation of work in small businesses by the adoption of WFH. The findings show that small businesses can rapidly learn new ways of working and support the claim that Swiss MSE MDs play a critical role in the adoption of WFH. They also confirm the importance of digital leadership and culture for realising the potential of WFH in small businesses.

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of healthcare entrepreneurship, both in terms of its current trends and future directions.

The article engages in a systematic review of extant research on healthcare entrepreneurship using the scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) as the review protocol and bibliometrics or scientometrics analysis as the review method.

Healthcare entrepreneurship research has fared reasonably well in terms of publication productivity and impact, with diverse contributions coming from authors, institutions and countries, as well as a range of monetary and non-monetary support from funders and journals. The (eight) major themes of healthcare entrepreneurship research revolve around innovation and leadership, disruption and technology, entrepreneurship models, education and empowerment, systems and services, orientations and opportunities, choices and freedom and policy and impact.

The article establishes healthcare entrepreneurship as a promising field of academic research and professional practice that leverages the power of entrepreneurship to advance the state of healthcare.

The article offers a seminal state of the art of healthcare entrepreneurship research.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a developing educational concept that aims to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability through education. Cultural sustainability education aims to cultivate awareness and protection of cultural assets, promote sustainable development and foster environmental responsibility. This study establishes a cyber-physical metaverse of cultural sustainability learning to cultivate students' motivation, multicultural identity, critical thinking and sustainability thinking.

In this study, virtual reality (VR) and 3D printing technologies were utilized to create a cyber-physical metaverse learning environment. This learning environment is designed to allow elementary school children to learn about indigenous cultures and the architecture of slate houses, as well as socio-architectural issues. Learners will be able to experience first-hand the plight of the indigenous tribal areas and the exploration of related cultural knowledge.

The study collected pre- and post-test data through questionnaires, using covariates to analyze learners' perceptions of learning. The results of this study showed that cyber-physical metaverse learning environment had a significant impact on learning motivation, multicultural identity and sustainability thinking for culturally sustainable education. However, this study’s impact on critical thinking skills in students remains to be confirmed.

This is a quasi-experimental study of a single country’s elementary school children in the indigenous area, so its findings cannot be extrapolated to other areas or to learners of different ages.

This study introduces a framework for incorporating both virtual and real cultures to promote sustainable learning. The cyber-physical metaverse learning is used to supplement teaching activities to enhance learners' motivation in learning multicultural knowledge. Students were able to recognize and protect cultural assets, as well as emphasize the importance of sustainable development.

This research examines the impact of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP) on poverty reduction and income growth in rural China.

The study develops a theoretical framework, which considers the role of geographical, technological, institutional and cultural factors for the e-commerce poverty alleviation (e-CPA) model. Empirically, this study applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the event study approach to evaluate the effectiveness of NRECDP on the basis of large-scale county-level and household-level panel data spanning 2010 to 2020.

The study found that the NRECDP, as a government-led, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, market-based program, has led to a significant increase in per capita output of primary industry employees, as well as in the disposable income of rural residents, especially those in national-level poverty-stricken (NP) counties. The interventions of the NRECDP achieved these positive outcomes through transportation and Internet infrastructure improvement, ICT adoption and human capital accumulation in impoverished towns and villages in remote rural areas. These effects are larger in the eastern region of China, followed by the central region, whereas the weakest effects were found in the western region. However, we found little evidence of the NRECDP increasing household developmental expenditure.

The study findings have important practical and policy implications for rural e-commerce development and self-sustained poverty alleviation solutions. The research revealed the significance of government NRECDP interventions for increasing rural income, reducing living costs, and empowering the rural population in its multiple social roles, namely, as consumers, producers, employees and microentrepreneurs. The local cultural context may also play a role in ICT adoption and entrepreneurship cultivation with a downstream effect on the effectiveness of e-CPA practices. Policymakers would need to ensure a supportive entrepreneur-friendly environment for rural e-commerce development and continue implementing progressive policies for poverty alleviation.

This study explores poverty alleviation issues in China by developing for the first time a multi-faceted framework that is subsequently tested by both county-level and household-level large-scale observations. Also, it is the first study to provide nationwide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of e-CPA in narrowing down the spatial and digital divides in China. In addition to the impact of geography, technology and governmental support, this study also sheds light on the role of culture in the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies and as a source of local entrepreneurial opportunities.

To better understand employees’ preferred extent for working from home (WFH) setting that implies physical distance from clients and co-workers and enhanced physical proximity to others at home, this study, relying on job-demands resources (J-DR) theory, aims to investigate the relationships between this preference with both the perceived increase in emotional job demands and the exposure to childcare demands. Thus, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of perceived job difficulty in the relationship between emotional job demands and the preferred extent for WFH, and the moderating role of gender in the relationship between the number of children and the preferred extent for WFH.

A total of 239 employees who began WFH during the pandemic completed an online survey. Structural equation modelling was conducted to analyse the data and test the hypotheses.

As expected, an increase in emotional job demands had a significant negative indirect association with the preferred extent for WFH, through perceived increase in job difficulty. Furthermore, the number of children was negatively related to the preferred extent for WFH among male but not female employees.

The findings provide insights for promoting employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

The study points to a relationship between emotional job demands and employee attitudes towards WFH in terms of increased job difficulty and the preferred extent for WFH. It also points to the need to investigate the interaction between sex and number of children to understand employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

Designing and implementing effective strategies for managing heritage resources throughout the world has become critically important as the impacts of climate change and human-caused destruction are increasingly felt. Of particular importance is the ability to identify and track fast- and slow-moving processes associated with weathering, erosion and the movement or removal of heritage objects by natural and human agents. In this paper, the authors demonstrate how 3D laser scanning can be used to detect and monitor changes to the Okotoks Erratic “Big Rock” Provincial Historic Resource in Alberta, Canada, over a period of 7 years.

Terrestrial laser scanning surveys of the Okotoks Erratic “Big Rock” Provincial Historic Resource were undertaken in 2013, 2016 and 2020. Registration was used to place the three epochs of point clouds into a unique datum for comparison using the cloud-to-cloud distance function in Cloud Compare.

The movement/repositioning of rocks around the base of the erratic, the emergence of “unofficial” paths and changes to interpretive trails and fencing were all identified at the site over the time period of the study.

Current conservation at the Okotoks Big Rock focus primarily on the rock art panels that are scattered over the erratic. The results of this study indicate they should be broadened so that the geological integrity of the site, which is intrinsically linked to its cultural value, can also be maintained.

This is the first study the authors are aware of that utilizes terrestrial laser scanning + change detection analysis to identify and track changes to a heritage site over a period as long as 7 years.