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This paper aims to delve into the complexity and multiplicity of consumer experiences in relation to mobile and virtual technology, and provides a lived-experience account of the Consumer Immediacy Pandemic (CIP) and related consumer experiences and responses.

Using open-ended, in-depth interviews, as well as personal essays, the research questions are addressed through the interpretive hermeneutic approach.

The CIP is an important, multifaceted consumer shift, whose ramifications are traceable in consumer behavior. It encompasses three consumer problem-solving styles (i.e. real-time, mobile and virtual problem-solving). Consumers adapt to the CIP through such strategies as unbundling of presence, temporal gain and synchronization, task continuity, work-fun integration and multi-tasking.

With conventional theories ineffectively explaining consumer experiences with such products as smart phone, social media and selfie stick, this paper provides fruitful directions for studying consumer-technology relationships.

The findings point to untapped and novel needs rooted in consumer experience with mobile and virtual technology such as the needs for personal information management and/or professional counseling.

The paper provides evidence as to a deep-seated shift in the role of technology in consumer life. Underestimating the ongoing and future success and power of mobile and virtual technology can be too costly for society at large.

This study exposes the dialogical interplay between consumer agency and structural influences that compels consumers to internalize immediacy as a taken-for-granted expectation. Such pandemic alters the ways consumers go about satisfying their needs and wants. The findings can help understand the twenty-first century consumer, theorize product agency and chart marketing and policy directions.

In this paper we report on the outcomes of a scenario planning project in Melbourne's (Australia) inner northern suburbs, which was undertaken in the context of an extended lockdown during Melbourne's second wave of COVID-19 infections. In this project, the researchers sought to identify the ways in which young people and youth service providers understood the challenges that the pandemic was creating for young people and the provision of youth services, and through the 5 years up to 2025.

The project was shaped by a scenario planning methodology that produced three research informed scenarios of possible futures for young people in Melbourne's inner north in 2025. The project conducted a series of structured video interviews with young people, and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders that asked participants to reflect on the context of the pandemic, and what the future might hold in relation to young people's pathways and health and well-being, and the futures of their communities and the planet.

The scenario planning methodology revealed many concerns, uncertainties and anxieties that were shared, but which also varied between young people and stakeholders – both about the immediacy of the pandemic, and its aftermaths and intersection with future crises.

The scenario planning approach offers sociologies of education and youth a means to do the future-oriented, “hopeful” work that multiple crises for young people demand. Scenario planning is an “affirmative” exercise in hope by which sociologies can “stay with the trouble” that we find ourselves in, and that the pandemic has amplified.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided leadership educators with a unique and perilous opportunity. The events of 2020 were profoundly impactful and traumatic for our students, but they also illustrate a level of visceral engagement with various leadership topics that is incredibly useful. In this article, we outline some of the pedagogical considerations for using a chaotic and trauma filled set of experiences to teach leadership concepts. Specific theories and topics areas are presented that represent the most likely intersection of the pandemic and leadership, and examples are included for use by practitioners.

This paper explores the role of professional collaboration and agency during the global COVID-19 pandemic and possible lessons for the future from the perspective of a teacher, leader and postgraduate researcher.

This essay explores the complex role of collaboration and agency in responding to the challenges arising during the global COVID-19 pandemic utilizing research as well as the author's lived experience.

The author finds that through a renewed emphasis on effective professional collaboration and agency, not only are there opportunities to embed lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is also scope to work towards education systems that reflect the complex global socio-political contexts communities may find themselves in and the evolving needs that result from them.

This paper offers insights into the work of teachers and school leaders, the increasing complexity of their roles over time, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering what this might mean for the future.

This study focuses on HR practices that foster employee engagement during Covid-19. Companies in transition economies are particularly vulnerable to crisis and downsizing and other recessionary practices are frequently used.

Drawing on the model of caring human resource management, we utilise interviews with human resource representatives of 10 banks in the transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We analyse the banks at two different times to demonstrate how and why companies adapt their HR practices.

Our findings show a changing mindset in the deployment of highly context-specific HR practices. Strengthening company culture through a sense of community and communication ensure stability and continuity in work. Rather than layoffs, flexible work has become standard.

By highlighting the interplay between HR practices and employee engagement, we contribute to the discussion on engagement in exceptional circumstances and challenging settings and demonstrate how caring responsibilities “migrate” into HR practices in the professional context of a transition economy.

We propose a context-specific “protective caring approach” to foster employee engagement during crises.

This paper aims to propose an approach to examining the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business, which presents a unique opportunity to study a hitherto-unavailable business scenario.

A conceptual framework is suggested to study the ability of a service firm to make adaptations to pandemic conditions based on the nature of its services: namely, the act of production and the type of recipient and the predisposed ability of the customer to accept the service firm’s adaptations to social distancing restrictions. Under this framework, it is demonstrated that service adaptations made due to COVID-19 business restrictions and the customers’ acceptance of them determine whether these changes are likely to become permanent.

A classification scheme is developed to determine four classes of service firms’ adaptations to their normal course of business made under pandemic conditions and suggestions given on how to project which adaptations may persist beyond the pandemic and why.

A conceptual framework grounded on Lovelock classification to present projections needs to be empirically tested.

Managerial insights based on the study and suggestions for research on what business practices are most likely to be permanently changed in a post-pandemic world for services are offered.

Using two of Lovelock’s dimensions pertaining to the nature of production and delivery of the service, four categories are proposed based on two characteristics: service adaptability and customer acceptance. The Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM2) model is extended to predict service adaptations, which are most likely to become permanent in a post-pandemic world.

The purpose of this paper is to provide managers with insights to help survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. Given the environment at the time of this paper, this paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis like COVID-19.

The authors offer a conceptual framework, grounded in the attribution theory and situation crisis communication theory (SCCT), for managers to use when determining which crisis response strategy is most appropriate to use during a crisis. Propositions based on this framework are provided. This paper focuses on widespread crises, such as a public health crisis, particularly on the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the framework proposed for organizational crisis response strategy and recovery, several insights for managers across a variety of industries emerge. Consideration of the best strategic approach to a crisis is essential, and time is critical. This framework provides a starting point for creating a proper response strategy when a crisis arises that is not within the organization’s crisis management planning. Managerial implications for several industries, such as restaurant, hotel, airline, education, retail, medical and other professional services, and theoretical implications to further the advancement of understanding are provided.

The findings of this paper demonstrate that organizations that apply an accommodative strategy during unintentional crises will survive, while during intentional crises, they will thrive in the marketplace. Similarly, organizations that apply an offensive strategy during unintentional crises will thrive, while during intentional crises, they will survive in the marketplace.

This paper provides a framework highlighting strategies that best protect an organization during both internally and externally caused crises. The response strategy and crisis framework are based on the attribution theory and SCCT. Building on this framework, six propositions are postulated. In keeping with this strategy and crisis framework, this study provides several crisis response insights for managers across a variety of industries. These suggestions act as a guide for managers when assessing how to respond in the early days of a crisis and what to do to recover from it.

This paper provides a crisis-strategy matrix, grounded in the attribution theory and SCCT, to provide decision-making guidance to help managers survive a crisis, create advantage during slow-growth recoveries and thrive when the crisis is over. The authors provide multiple industry insights related to the “how to” and the “what to” in the recovery from and survival through internally and externally caused crises.