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The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a significant impact on several aspects of public relations practice. By adopting the theoretical framework of adaptive leadership, this research is designed to explore how an organization’s top leadership can support related adaptive action in strategic communication. Particularly, we hope to explore whether the application of adaptive leadership could facilitate a higher level of communication transparency as well as deliver a sense of caring and empathy in COVID-19 communication.

An international online survey was designed and conducted for this study. The first sample consists of 776 full-time communication professionals in the United States of America with 435 women (56.1%) and 341 men (43.9%). The second sample consists of 268 full-time communication professionals in Canada, with 110 women (41.0%) and 158 men (59.0%). The two samples were merged into the final sample of 1,044 for the data analysis.

Results confirmed that the perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic increased communication professionals’ challenges in building trust. It also drives adaptive changes in their coping actions in strategic communication. More importantly, the top leadership within the organization played a key role in this adaptive leadership environment by demonstrating commitment to transparency in COVID-19 communication and delivering a sense of empathy during the pandemic.

This study contributes to our understanding of strategic communication in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, by focusing on the adaptive nature of communication leadership. More importantly, our study confirms the important roles of two leadership attributes (i.e. the sense of empathy and the commitment to communication transparency) in supporting adaptive leadership, which eventually influences trust building.

The post-COVID environment presents significant challenges for organizations. Unfortunately, many leaders and organizations are living in “post-pandemic.” Leaders must reframe their approaches to employee relationships and the nature of the workplace. Employee experience, which combines, user experience, design thinking and organizational development, provides a methodology and perspective that is needed to address these significant changes. The purpose of this paper is to readdress employee experience and how its approach challenges conventional approaches to human resources (HR) and employee engagement and demonstrate how it can serve as an indispensable tool for transitioning to the new workplace.

Employee experience has become ubiquitous in organizations, but unfortunately the underlying sources and philosophies that distinguish this approach are often neglected. This paper demonstrates the new, irreversible organizational world created by COVID-19, reviews the origins of the concept, reviews the six principles previously introduced and then explicates three philosophical paradigmatic shifts that must be undertaken to take advantage of employee experience and address the new organizational challenges.

Employee experience can serve as a strategic tool for addressing post-COVID-19 organizational challenges. Past ideas about engagement will not work. Three shifts deriving from employee experience’s roots in user experiences, design thinking and emergent organization development must be adopted. Instead of thinking structurally in which things are primary, leaders need to take a relational perspective which insists on relational primacy. Because experience is holistic and embodied, a phenomenological perspective must take the place of the usual behavioral perspective. Finally, leaders and HR must see the task ahead as a collaborative codesign with employees, insisting on radical participation.

As with the medical challenges with the COVID-19 virus itself, the organizational challenges are new and have never been faced before. It is difficult to shift paradigms, challenge assumptions and redirect effort while maintaining operating organizations. Often, leaders and organizations are ill-equipped to address very novel situations from past experience and education. Much more research and practical implementations need to be conducted to continue to evolve the concept.

Organizations are facing many crises beyond the supply/demand economic issues caused by COVID-19. The social issues within the organizational world are often overlooked but having significant impact. Cultures have been attenuated and disrupted, employee expectations have changed and the remote job market has expanded opportunities for employment. As a result, retention, performance, loyalty and satisfaction have been negatively impacted. If organizations want to continue growth and productivity, they need to find new ways of working and operating.

The nature of work, organization and employee/organization relationship is in transition. Because much of people’s lives are spent in the workplace, this shift has significant implications for relationships within and beyond the workplace. COVID-19 has also had an impact on mental health, life satisfaction and other aspects of the human experience. Experience in the workplace and outside the workplace are converging and impacting each other. The new reality cannot be ignored or denied.

Many organizations, leaders and HR practitioners are approaching the new reality with outdated and ineffective tools from the pre-COVID-19 world, tools that were questionably effective then. Reclaiming the revolutionary underpinnings of employee experience is a necessary but often neglected action.

In today’s world, empowering individuals, promoting social cohesion and advancing economic development all hinge on access to high-quality education, prioritizing diversity, inclusion and equality. Rethinking current educational strategies using cyber-physical learning assets is necessary to accommodate the learning inclusivity and equity and escalating demands of a globalized world. There is a pressing demand for evidence to support the efficacy of collaborative learning in transforming curriculum and fostering learner inclusion. However, it is recognized as a pedagogical technique within the quality education domain. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by investigating how hybridized cybergogy paradigms facilitate collaborative learning, focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, to improve educational quality in higher education.

This study used a qualitative approach with an exploratory design guided by an interpretive philosophical perspective. The data was gathered from 60 prospective teachers from the public sector university of Sindh, Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. They were then analyzed using theme analysis to understand their views on the potential of hybridized cybergogy paradigms for collaborative learning to improve the quality of education provided at institutions.

The study results confirm that learners benefit from increased access to learning resources, improved critical thinking and problem-solving skills and a more diverse and inclusive classroom working together in a collaborative hybridized cybergogy setting. By fostering SDG 4 (Quality Education) and the 21st-century skills necessary for global marketplace engagement and competing in progressive environments, this creative method equips learners with the capabilities to face modern global challenges.

The study offers valuable practical suggestions to stakeholders in higher education, including faculty, policymakers and teacher education programs, for integrating hybridized cybergogy and collaborative learning to align curricula with sustainable development goals. Additionally, it bridges a significant gap in the existing literature, which will aid future researchers interested in exploring this area.

This study stands out as it explores an underexamined area while providing novel educational insights.

This paper explores the context within which experimental, pedagogically progressive schools were established in Australia during the first decades of the 20th century.

The paper presents a case study of the establishment of Rosbercon Girls’ Grammar School. It draws on educator accounts, archival documents and contemporary literature to provide a brief narrative of the events leading to the opening of the school; to sketch the family of educators who were pivotal in making it a reality; and to identify key aspects of the social and legislative context that made such an initiative possible.

Rosbercon was established at a time when a modest school could be established relatively easily by a small group of educators with a shared vision. The early 20th century was a moment of national optimism in Australia, where an appetite for new educational ideas created a climate in which innovative educators found fertile soil for their pedagogical experiments and adaptation of emerging ideas from around the world. Their efforts were facilitated by an emerging global network of personal interactions, professional learning, professional associations and educational literature.

This paper addresses the relative lack of scholarly examination of the origins of Rosbercon Girls’ Grammar School, an institution that previous authors have identified as Australia’s oldest experimental school. The case study also contributes to a broader appreciation of the trajectory of progressive education during the early 20th century.

This study aims to identify the essential elements impacting the adoption of blockchain technology (BCT) in supply chain management (SCM) by integrating the technology acceptance and information system success (ISS) models.

Questionnaire-based data was collected from 236 supply chain professionals from Beijing. The proposed research framework was evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM) by using SPSS 23 and AMOS 24 software.

The empirical findings specify the positive influence of total quality on perceived usefulness and compatibility. Further, perceived ease of use positively influences perceived usefulness, compatibility and behavioral intention. Moreover, perceived usefulness positively impacts compatibility and behavioral intention. Compatibility positively influences behavioral intention. Finally, technology trust was found to be a significant moderator between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention and between perceived ease of use and adoption intention to use BCT in SCM.

This study empirically develops the second-order construct of total quality, representing the ISS model. Furthermore, this study established how the ISS and technology acceptance models influence behavioral intention through compatibility. Finally, this study confirmed the moderating role of technology trust among perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention.

This paper aims to model the price of cellar tours using a hedonic pricing approach. The authors analyze the complex relationship between the price of an add-on (here, cellar tours) and the price of the reference product (here, wine).

Thanks to a large database containing information on about 1,000 winery experiences, the authors regress the price of cellar tours on wine prices and on a broad set of objective characteristics that are (1) tour specific and (2) common to all tours offered by the winery. These exogenous controls include the type and style of experience offered, amenities and winemaking characteristics.

The authors show that the price of cellar tours follows the price of the most expensive wine sold by the winery, which is a proxy for reputation. The authors find that one of the main determinants of cellar tour prices is visit length: wineries charge more for longer experiences. The number of wines tasted during the visit also increases the price. Prices are higher in places where there is a high level of wine tourism activity, which might be a sign of authenticity.

Wine producers in different countries need to gain insights on how to price cellar tours, which are composite goods. The results can help practitioners price their winery experience according to common practices in different wine regions. The results may also be of interest to professionals in the tourism sector who are in charge of the pricing of by-products (e.g. tee-shirts, books, etc.), or for luxury fashion labels extending their brand in the catering industry with cafes and restaurants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first empirical analysis that examines the complex relationship between the price of an add-on and the price of the reference product in the context of wine tourism.