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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many educational institutions to move face-to-face education to entirely online education. This digital transformation has, in turn, reinforced the digital divide between learners who have easy access to digital devices and the Internet and other learners who do not have those. In addition to the digital divide, the differences in their genders and educational levels potentially impact leveling up learning. Therefore, the study in the present chapter has aimed to examine university-level sophomore and junior students’ differences in learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of gender, educational level, and the digital divide. Data from a survey indicate that both females and males, and sophomores and juniors had different attitudes toward using digital devices, attending virtual classes and accessing online courses through the mobile phone or the home Internet. Based on the findings on their differences, the chapter makes some implications and recommendations for policymakers, course designers and teachers in the course design, especially in the emergence.

This chapter explores Generation Z's perceptions of learning. Learning can be viewed from three distinct lenses: effectiveness, enjoyment, and engagement of various modalities. Modalities include demonstrated (watch in person), video-based (watch online), intrapersonal (independent), interpersonal (in collaboration with others), social (among others but not working together), and experiential (doing). Effectiveness involves the extent that a certain modality is effective for learning. Enjoyment is reflective of preference and satisfaction with different modalities. Finally, engagement is the actual utilization of specific modalities.

This chapter analyzes the link between the digital divide, infrastructure regulation, and disaster planning and relief through a case study of the flood in San Jose, California triggered by the Anderson dam’s overtopping in February 2017 and an examination of communication failures during the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California. This chapter theorizes that regulatory decisions construct social and disaster vulnerability. Rooted in the Whole Community approach to disaster planning and relief espoused by the United Nations and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, this chapter calls for leadership to end the digital divide. It highlights the imperative of understanding community information needs and argues for linking strategies to close the digital divide with infrastructure and emergency planning. As the Internet’s integration into society increases, the digital divide diminishes access to societal resources including disaster aid, and exacerbates wildfire, flood, pandemic, and other risks. To mitigate climate change, climate-induced disaster, protect access to social services and the economy, and safeguard democracy, it argues for digital inclusion strategies as a centerpiece of community-centered infrastructure regulation and disaster relief.

This study systematically maps the research trends in the domain of “shadow education” over the last 40 years using metadata extracted from the SCOPUS database. The results reveal that the outputs of shadow education research have grown exponentially within the last decade. Bray and his colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, and the Education University of Hong Kong have been the most prolific and influential research team. They are followed by Park and Byun from the USA, who have mostly worked on East Asian contexts. The USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China, have been the main sources of contributions and the University of Hong Kong has been the leading university in this field. Educational studies, economics, psychology, linguistics, and sociology have been the main disciplines researched within shadow education. Shadow education studies have revealed how shadow education can be a major instrument for maintaining and exacerbating social inequalities. They have also largely focused on the tangible (quantifiable) benefits related to improving students’ examination results. This study’s results stress the importance of regulating the private tutoring market, suggesting areas for ongoing research.

Manufacturing in Mauritius is mostly export-oriented. Any supply chain (SC) failure or resilience deficit may result in cancellation of orders and loss of customers, market share and revenue and reduce capability to compete globally. Addressing this challenge is complex, although digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) models can improve resilience by assisting decision-making and mitigate risks, thus infusing greater predictability across the SC.

Supply chains are facing increasing disruptions and uncertainties owing to extreme weather events, the war in Ukraine, market volatility and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, among other factors. Manufacturing industries and their supply chains essentially create thousands of jobs that enable economic growth and sustain export capability. In addition, they need to maintain or increase both productivity and efficiency and recover quickly from unforeseen or unexpected challenges – that is they need to be resilient. Transformation initiatives, whether in production or supply chain management (SCM), are never easy. Process changes not supported by data or hurried human decisions can sometimes have unintended consequences, mainly adverse. However, in times of greater uncertainty (war and pandemic), setbacks can have greater consequences on the business. Manufacturers are already apprehensive and report slowing exports as recession concerns have caused consumers and businesses to pull back on spending. There is therefore a need to reduce uncertainty and augment resilience by unlocking and synthesising insights that emanate from the power of data analytics, AI and machine learning to improve the resilience efficiency balance.

This chapter will discuss the opportunities arising from the adoption and implementation of digital technologies and AI in SCM, leading to better value creation, less greenhouse gas emissions and resilience. The hurdles that enterprises are facing to integrate AI in their logistics and SCs will also be highlighted. This work comments on initiatives that uphold the objectives of SDG 8 – decent work and economic growth, SDG 9 – industry, innovation & infrastructure and SDG 13 – climate action.

It is estimated that nearly 2 billion world population is now living in countries affected by extreme forms of violence, war, and criminal activities (World Bank, 2016). Apart from being affected by war and having higher poverty rates, millions are affected by climate-related disasters, pandemics which have destroyed livelihoods and lives. In 2011 and 2012 alone, more than 450 million individuals faced environmental crises (Blankespoor et al., 2010; Laframboise & Loko, 2012). Human rights advocates that every individual has the right to live with dignity and respect. International agencies are trying their best to ensure that everyone, and mainly the vulnerable communities, gets assistance in a manner that is consistent with human rights and includes the right to participation and non-discrimination. One such right is the right to education, a right which has been articulated in numerous conventions and documents and has been a part of policy maker’s debate. In emergency situations, whether man-made or a natural disaster, students face an acute crisis of accessing higher education, even when the country is limping back to normalcy. The book Higher Education in Emergencies: International Case Studies discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning practice in higher education in different countries and highlights the cultural transformation of policy and practice. In addition, the authors propose future directions on how to be prepared and address the challenges of emergencies and draw implications of their findings beyond the national context.

Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

There is a growing interest in the use of HR-based Industry 4.0 technologies for equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) issues yet the emerging trends of Industry 4.0 in EDI implementations and interventions are not fully covered. This chapter investigates the emerging themes regarding EDI and Industry 4.0 interaction through Google-based big data that show the actual interest in Industry 4.0 and EDI. Drawing on a web analytics method that tracks the real click behaviours of web users through querying combined sets of keywords, the study explores the trends and interactions between Industry 4.0 technologies and EDI-related HR practices. Our search engine results page (SERP) analyses find a high volume of queries and a significant interest between EDI elements and artificial intelligence (AI) only. In contrast to the suggestions of the extant literature, no significant user interest in other Industry 4.0 applications for EDI implementations was observed. The authors suggest that other Industry 4.0 technologies such as machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) for EDI implementations are in their early stages.