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This conversation presents the reflections from six international disaster scholars on how disaster capitalism manifested in very different ways in different countries, including Japan, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the September 15, 2020.

The prominent themes in this conversation include profiteering, oppression and the politics of disasters.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around disaster capitalism and disaster risk creation.

Few people living in informal settlements in the Global South spontaneously claim that they are “resilient” or “adapting” to disaster risk or climate change. Surely, they often overcome multiple challenges, including natural hazards exacerbated by climate change. Yet their actions are increasingly examined through the framework of resilience, a notion developed in the North, and increasingly adopted in the South. To what extent eliminate’ do these initiatives correspond to the concepts that scholars and authorities place under the resilience framework?

Three longitudinal case studies in Yumbo, Salgar and San Andrés (Colombia) serve to investigate narratives of disaster risks and responses to them. Methods include narrative analysis from policy and project documents, presentations, five workshops, six focus groups and 24 interviews.

The discourse adopted by most international scholars and local authorities differs greatly from that used by citizens to explain risk and masks the politics involved in disaster reduction and the search for social justice. Besides, narratives of social change, aspirations and social status are increasingly masked in disaster risk explanations. Tensions are also concealed, including those regarding the winners and losers of interventions and the responsibilities for disaster risk reduction.

Our findings confirm previous results that have shown that the resilience framework contributes to “depoliticize” the analysis of risk and serves to mask and dilute the responsibility of political and economic elites in disaster risk creation. But they also show that resilience fails to explain the type of socioeconomic change that is required to reduce vulnerabilities in Latin America.

As the hospitality industry continues to grow globally, the development of highly skilled and educated human capital is a major industry challenge.

The WHO/World Bank states that 15% of the world's population lives with some form of disability, yet this degree of diversity cannot be found within the management levels of the hospitality industry. In order to obtain this, diversity should also be found within the student cohorts of hospitality educational institutions.

This chapter seeks to examine how the hospitality educational sector policies and practices contribute towards the full inclusiveness of students with disabilities and by association towards the diversity found within the higher levels of management within the hospitality industry.

The findings suggest that implicitly students with disabilities are being discouraged from enrolling upon and successfully completing a degree in hospitality management, a growing necessity for a management career within the hospitality industry. Therefore, a shift of perspective is required to see disability not as a personal health condition of individuals. However, the hospitality educational sector should seek to embrace more innovation, with the adoption of technology that seeks to create access and meaningful encounters with student from all sectors of the society; in addition, the sector can help overcome the often negative societal attitudes and perceptions displayed towards people with disabilities. This can be achieved by integrating positive images of students with disabilities and clear and transparent policy statements in public facing material, which is often used as marketing and promotional material for institutions. In this way, the hospitality educational sector would be seen to be taking positive steps in preparing talent drawn from all section of society and can be regarded as an active agent in the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 with a goal of full inclusiveness within the hospitality higher educational sector.

This study aims to construct and empirically test a theoretical model of a mediated relationship between ethical leadership and organizational cynicism.

From a communication perspective, this study examines the underlying mechanism of the association between ethical leadership and organizational cynicism. A cross-sectional survey was sent to participants in different occupations. Path analysis was used to test the overall model fit.

The results indicate that ethical leadership has both a direct and indirect effect on organizational cynicism through the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) and organizational identification. However, a surprising finding is that the mediating mechanisms of LMX and organizational identification are not in a parallel structure, but in a serial pattern. That is, the mediating role of LMX is further mediated by organizational identification.

This study contributes to the literature in several aspects. First, the study sheds light on leadership as an important source of organizational cynicism. In particular, the theoretical model presents pathways that show how the predictive effects of ethical leadership on organizational cynicism are mediated through leader-member relationships and organizational identification. Second, the theoretical analysis on the mediating process highlights the role of communication in facilitating the influence of leadership and constructing organizational identification. Third, the mediating model offers concrete guidance for organizations in their attempt to mitigate organizational cynicism.

In this chapter, we identify three distinct transformational performance improvement (TPI) approaches commonly used to redesign work processes in health care organizations. We describe the unique components or tools that each approach uses to improve the delivery of health services. We also summarize what is empirically known about the effectiveness of each TPI approach according to systematic reviews and recent studies published in the peer-reviewed literature. Based on examination of this research, we discuss what knowledge is still needed to strengthen the evidence for whole system transformation. This involves the use of conceptual frameworks to assess and guide implementation efforts, and facilitators and barriers to change as revealed in a recent evaluation of one major initiative, the Lean Enterprise Transformation (LET) at the Veterans Health Administration. The analysis suggests ways in which TPI facilitators can be developed and barriers reduced to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of quality initiatives. Finally, we discuss appropriate study designs to evaluate TPI interventions that may strengthen the evidence for their effectiveness in real world practice settings.

Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding has been directed towards organisations to pilot innovations to support transition, with accompanying evaluations often conducted with a single disciplinary focus, in a context of short timescales and small budgets. Recognising the value and weight of the challenge involved in evaluation of innovations that aim to support the transitions of young people leaving care, this paper aims to provide a review of evaluation approaches and suggestions regarding how these might be developed.

As part of a wider research programme to improve understanding of the innovation process for young people leaving care, the authors conducted a scoping review of grey literature (publications which are not peer reviewed) focusing on evaluation of innovations in the UK over the past 10 years. The authors critiqued the evaluation approaches in each of the 22 reports they identified with an inter-disciplinary perspective, representing social care, public health and organisation science.

The authors identified challenges and opportunities for the development of evaluation approaches in three areas. Firstly, informed by social care, the authors suggest increased priority should be granted to participatory approaches to evaluation, within which involvement of young people leaving care should be central. Secondly, drawing on public health, there is potential for developing a common outcomes’ framework, including methods of data collection, analysis and reporting, which aid comparative analysis. Thirdly, application of theoretical frameworks from organisation science regarding the process of innovation can drive transferable lessons from local innovations to aid its spread.

By adopting the unique perspective of their multiple positions, the authors’ goal is to contribute to the development of evaluation approaches. Further, the authors hope to help identify innovations that work, enhance their spread, leverage resources and influence policy to support care leavers in their transitions to adulthood.

This study aims at providing empirical evidence pertaining to the interaction among authentic leadership, workplace harmony, worker's creativity and performance in the context of telecommunication sector. These research streams remain important issues and of interest as the world continues to migrate toward a knowledge-based economy.

Applying structural equation modeling, this study diagnosed the impact of Authentic leadership (AL) on employees (n = 345) in two Jordanian telecommunication firms, specifically, how it shapes workplace climate, creativity and job performance. The study also tests the moderating role of knowledge sharing in the model, as well as the mediating role of workplace climate on the relationship between AL and positive organizational outcomes.

The empirical result suggests that AL positively influences workplace climate, creativity and job performance; workplace climate positively influences creativity and job performance; workplace climate mediates the relationship between AL and creativity, and job performance; and knowledge sharing behavior moderates the relationship between AL and workplace climate.

This study highlights the magnificent power of AL and knowledge sharing, not only in shaping the workplace atmosphere but also in delineating how these variables stimulate creativity and performance among employees. The implications for research and practice are discussed.