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This study explored the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on rural municipal police in Pennsylvania.

The authors surveyed rural police chiefs and sworn officers to inquire about their intra-department organizational capabilities, police-community relations, well-being practices, and how these strategies may have developed since March 2020.

The pandemic affected rural police officers and rural policing strategies in many ways. Moreover, existing challenges to limited rural police budgets were exacerbated suggesting a need for more flexible budgetary capacities, access to wellness resources were limited suggesting better access to these resources and preparation for responding to public health emergencies was limited suggesting more complete training is warranted.

This study draws attention to the unique experiences of rural municipal police across one state by capturing specific areas of concern throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

The purpose of this paper was to examine law enforcement officers' perspectives on job stress and barriers to supportive resources when working child sexual abuse cases in a large southern state. It is well documented in the literature that professionals who work in healthcare, emergency services and law enforcement face tremendous amounts of stress and consequences to their physical and mental health. Little research has been done to examine how child sexual abuse investigations impact law enforcement, and how these specialized officers perceive access to supportive resources.

This qualitative study was part of a larger quantitative study and included 20 law enforcement officers who participated in anonymous, semi-structured phone interviews.

Findings included (1) child sexual abuse cases are difficult, specialized and disturbing (2) barriers to supportive resources include law enforcement culture, the stigma of asking for help, awareness and accessibility of resources and leadership as gatekeeper to the resources and (3) officers perceive both formal and informal resources to be helpful and at best should be proactively available to all officers in the state. A model of the findings was developed to illustrate the implications for practitioners and scholars.

This study was not without weaknesses, specifically the small number of participants, volunteer sampling does not represent the general population and the sampling technique means some demographics may have been missed by researchers.

This study adds to the literature on law enforcement mental health, occupational health and mental health resources. It confirms established research in the literature and provides insight into officer perspectives about barriers that prevent access to informal and formal supports that could improve their emotional well-being.

This study is the first of its kind, to our knowledge, that asks detectives and investigators of child abuse cases about mental health resources. These law enforcement officers are at high-risk for traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout due to the specialized cases they investigate.

We present the results of one of the only in-depth studies of a police agency’s internal and external response to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (COVID-19). This study emphasizes the importance of law enforcement agencies conducting comprehensive case studies and after-action assessments to prepare, prevent and respond to prolonged public health crises and showcases the profound (and lingering) effects of COVID-19 on police organizations.

This multi-method case study combines document analysis, a workforce survey, a community survey, interviews and analysis of administrative data to detail and assess the agency’s internal and operational responses to the pandemic and the reactions of employees and community members to those responses.

Despite agency strategies to mitigate the pandemic’s effects, employees cited very high stress levels one year after the pandemic and a third of sworn officers considered leaving the policing profession altogether during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several policies intended by the agency to protect employee health and maintain staffing needs kept workforce levels steady but may have increased feelings of organizational injustice in both sworn and non-sworn individuals, with variation across racial and gender groups. A jurisdiction-wide community survey indicated general support for the police department’s responses but a preference for in-person rather than telephone-based responses to service calls. Officers, however, preferred continuing remote responses even after the pandemic subsided.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the only in-depth case studies that examine a police agency’s internal and external responses to COVID-19 and the sworn, non-sworn and community reactions to those responses.

This paper aims to explore virtual simulations, merging artificial intelligence with real-world simulations, supporting Canadian armed forces (CAF) junior military leaders (JMLs) leadership development. Our research questions are: (1) How do virtual simulations support CAF junior military leadership development within a globalized and complex environment in the 21st century? (2) Could virtual simulations support a leadership culture change through efficacious “soft skills” training? In this paper, we explore the efficacy of virtual simulations for enhancing or developing leadership in JMLs in the CAF through a four-day pilot project with twenty JMLs (n = 20).

To assess the efficacy of virtual simulations for leadership development, we designed and studied a four-day leadership workshop for JMLs in the CAF using several virtual artificial intelligence leadership role-play simulations developed by McGraw Hill in their smart book textbook (Manning & Curtis, 2022) and several non-virtual in-class simulations for comparison. We selected four twenty to thirty-minute virtual role-play simulations that synergized with the in-person morning leadership workshop. We facilitated the three-hour leadership workshops and virtual/in-class simulations over four consecutive days. We emulated the ELESS model (De Freitas & Routledge, 2013) to assess soft and leadership skills.

The participants (JMLs) reported beneficial learning utility associated with the virtual simulations. Participants also expressed that further utility might be leveraged through virtual simulations incorporating greater complexity with multiple potential outcomes. They also suggested that leadership simulations designed around military situations would prove highly beneficial, something that was outside of the scope of this small pilot project.

Since this phase of our research is a pilot project, we secured a small amount of funding to test our hypothesis that simulations enhance leadership development for JMLs. These funding limitations resulted in several constraints in the research, such as the availability of virtual simulations articulating leadership from a military perspective. However, we believed the assigned organizational leadership simulations in the McGraw Hill Smart Book ecosystem would approximate generic leadership situations enough to test the hypothesis with the JMLs. As a pilot project, our sample size was relatively small (n = 20 JMLs) since participation was voluntary amidst a busy spring season for the JMLs. Since this is a pilot project, we suggest that twenty JMLs are an adequate sampling to test the hypothesis that simulations enhance JML leadership development. We will expand the sample size in the next phase of our research as we work with the CAF to expand the pool of participants to at least forty JML participants (n = 40). We also plan to secure further funding to collaborate with subject matter experts to design virtual simulations based on Canadian military leadership scenarios.

The CAF host robust simulations capabilities for combat training, but have not exploited the potential training and analytical capacity of virtual leadership simulations for leadership development within the CAF. We believe that virtual simulations provide an opportunity for the CAF to effect desired culture change through leadership development that leverages the substantial pedagogical benefits of simulations.

The CAF encountered several detrimental leadership scandals that eroded the reputational capital of the CAF. In the current geo-political climate of an expanding North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and threats from several international actors, the CAF seeks to expand its capabilities by adding and enhancing its human capital. However, the CAF currently experiences a significant gap in its human capital aspirations. There is a unanimous consensus that the endemic traditional culture of the CAF, as expressed in the recent explosive leadership scandals, is a deterrent to recruitment and thus weakens the CAF’s capability. The CAF targets leadership development with new leadership paradigms as pivotal to culture change. The CAF suggests that by enhancing leadership development in the CAF the new cadre of leadership will change the culture of the CAF and thereby enhance the reputational capital of the CAF. It is believed that this rejuvenated culture will lead to greater recruitment and retention, leading to a strengthened military. A strengthened military is important to provide effective support and protection for the Canadian people in these volatile and uncertain times. This expanded capacity will enable the CAF to address external military threats more effectively and also the increasing operations other than war (OOTW), such as the military support of long-term care facilities during COVID-19 or the military’s support in fighting record wildfires and the military’s support in climate change related disasters such as flooding.

The satisfaction measures indicated by the participants are typical evaluative measures of leadership development (Noe, 2023). These satisfaction ratings do not, however, indicate whether training has produced a change in behaviour (Brown, 2022). The implications of these outcomes for leadership education are that role-player simulations are useful leadership education and development tools because they provide a theatre of practice in which mistakes are not detrimental and serve as learning moments (Moore, 2012; Piro and O’Callaghan, 2021; Riotto, 2021). Further, the importance of role-player simulations that closely approximate the sector where leadership is experienced and practiced is perceived to enhance the experience. While the CAF invest in combat related simulations, but leadership development simulations are not as evident in the training and development array. This study seeks to assess their potential value as a leadership development tool within the wider context of character development as a leadership competency.

To cater to the senior tourist market, it is essential to comprehend the factors motivating and deterring them from international travel post-COVID-19. This study aims to focus on senior citizens’ destination choice intentions and aims to develop a model that prioritizes positive and negative factors leading to international travel destination choices. It uses push–pull factors, perceived travel risks (PTRs) and perceived travel constraints (PTCs).

Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (Fuzzy TOPSIS) are two multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques used to identify connections between variables and determine their relative importance in the decision-making model.

DEMATEL found push and pull factors are “effects” while PTCs and PTRs are “causes” affecting senior citizens’ destination choices. Push factors and PTCs have a greater impact than pull factors and PTRs. Fuzzy TOPSIS highlighted “improving health and wellness” and “self-fulfillment and spirituality” as key push factors, “health safety and security quotient” as the most important pull factor, and “interpersonal constraints” as the most critical PTC. Finally, “health risks” is the top PTR.

This paper adds to the tourism literature by looking at the relationship between senior tourists’ motivation, PTRs and PTCs and showing how the subfactors affect their choice of destination rank. The data analysis techniques used in this study are also novel, having never been used before in senior tourism research. Finally, even though there is a lot of research on senior tourism, not much is known about how Indian senior tourists act. In light of this study’s findings, practical recommendations were offered to tourism stakeholders worldwide, interested in tapping into the market of Indian outbound senior tourists or repositioning product or destination offerings to take this promising market or similar markets into account.

为了成功迎合蓬勃发展的老年旅游市场, 了解激励和阻止老年人国际旅行的因素尤为重要, 尤其是在 COVID-19 之后。本研究侧重于老年人的目的地选择意向, 并基于推拉因素、感知旅行风险 (PTR) 和感知旅行限制 (PTC), 旨在开发影响老年人国际旅游目的地选择的积极和消极因素的模型。

决策试验和评估实验室 (DEMATEL), 和与理想解决方案相似度的模糊偏好顺序 (Fuzzy TOPSIS) 是两种多标准决策 (MCDM) 技术, 用于识别变量之间的联系并找出它们在决策模型中的相对重要性。

DEMATEL的结果表明, 推力和拉力因素是“影响”, 而感知旅行约束（PTC）和感知旅行风险（PTR）是影响老年人目的地选择意愿的因素中的“原因”。推动因素和 PTC 比拉动因素和 PTR 发挥更重要的作用。 Fuzzy TOPSIS分析结果表明, “改善健康”和“自我实现和精神”是推动因素下最重要的因素。此外, 目的地的“健康安全商数”是拉动因素中最重要的, “人际约束”是PTC中最重要的。最后, 研究结果表明, “健康风险”是 PTR 中最重要的。

本文通过评估旅游动机、PTR 和老年游客 PTC 之间的相互关系, 为现有的旅游文献做出了贡献。此外, 该研究展示了影响老年游客目的地选择意愿的因素中各个子因素的比较优先级。本研究中使用的数据分析技术也很新颖, 以前从未在老年人旅游研究中使用过。最后, 虽然对老年旅游有丰富的研究, 但印度老年旅游者的行为相对不为人知。研究结果向有兴趣进入印度出境老年游客市场或重新定位产品或目的地的全球旅游利益相关者提供了切实可行的建议, 以考虑这个有前景的市场或类似市场。

Para atender a un mercado turístico de la tercera edad, es esencial comprender los factores que les motivan y les disuaden de realizar viajes internacionales tras el COVID-19. Este estudio se centra en las intenciones de elección de destino de las personas mayores y pretende desarrollar un modelo que priorice los factores positivos y negativos que conducen a la elección de un destino de viaje internacional. Utiliza los factores push-pull, los riesgos de viaje percibidos (PTR) y las limitaciones de viaje percibidas (PTC).

Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) y Fuzzy Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Fuzzy TOPSIS) son dos técnicas de toma de decisiones multicriterio (MCDM) utilizadas para identificar las conexiones entre variables y determinar su importancia relativa en el modelo de toma de decisiones.

DEMATEL descubrió que los factores de empuje y atracción son “efectos,” mientras que las PTC y las PTR son “causas” que afectan a las elecciones de destino de las personas mayores. Los factores de empuje y los PTC tienen un mayor impacto que los factores de atracción y los PTR. El Fuzzy TOPSIS destacó la “mejora de la salud y el bienestar” y la “autorrealización y espiritualidad” como factores de empuje clave, el “cociente de seguridad y protección de la salud” como el factor de atracción más importante y las “limitaciones interpersonales” como el PTC más crítico. Por último, los “riesgos para la salud” son el principal PTR.

Este artículo se suma a la literatura turística al estudiar la relación entre la motivación de los turistas sénior, los PTR y los PTC y mostrar cómo afectan los subfactores a su elección del destino. Las técnicas de análisis de datos empleadas en este estudio también son novedosas, ya que nunca se habían utilizado en la investigación sobre el turismo senior. Por último, aunque existen muchas investigaciones sobre el turismo sénior, el comportamiento de los turistas de la tercera edad en la India es relativamente desconocido. A la luz de los resultados del estudio, se ofrecen recomendaciones prácticas a las partes interesadas en el turismo de todo el mundo, interesadas en aprovechar el mercado de los turistas senior indios emisores o en reposicionar la oferta de productos o destinos para tener en cuenta este prometedor mercado o mercados similares.

This study aims to focus on how the design of an organization influences employee sustainability. It also highlights how top management support can mediate this relationship.

In order to examine the role of employee quality of life on performance sustainability, a quantitative survey approach was adopted. A questionnaire was distributed using simple random sampling to the employees working in the hotel sector.

Results suggest that organizations can enhance employee sustainability, including performance, commitment, motivation and retention, by investing in values that align with their employees, providing suitable health and wellness initiatives, and adopting in career growth policies. In that, values, health and wellness and human development are confirmed to be core determinants of employee sustainability, with a negligible role of fair compensation and physical artifacts. Top management support is found to mediate the relationship between employee quality of life and sustainability.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employee quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how organizational design for quality of life can assist employee sustainability with the mediation role of top management support. The study recommends that the hotel organizations should consider designing their work environments to promote their employees’ quality of life, which affects their sustainability within the hotel industry.

While there is ample research in business and management literature on the economic and environmental factors of sustainability, social sustainability has received less concentration. This study gives more attention to how employee social sustainability can be affected by the managerial and organizational factors of ensuring work life balance and top management support.

This study demonstrates how becoming a high-reliability institution in health care is a priority, given the high-risk environment in which an error can result in harm. Literature conceptually supports the need for highly reliable health care facilities but does not show a comprehensive approach to operationalizing the concept into the daily workforce to support patients. The Veterans Health Administration closes the gap by documenting a case study that not only demonstrates specific actions and functions that create a high-reliability organization (HRO) for safety and improvement but also created a learning organization by spreading the knowledge to other facilities.

The authors instituted a methodology consisting of assessments, training and educational simulations to measure, establish and operationalize activities that identified and prevented harmful events. Visual communication boards were created to facilitate team huddles and discuss improvement ideas. Improvements were then measured and analyzed for purposeful outcomes and return on investment (ROI).

HRO can be operationalized successfully in health care systems. Measurable outcomes verified that psychological safety was achieved through the identification and participation of 3,184 process improvement projects over a five-year period, which yielded a US$2.8m ROI. Documented processes and activities were used for educational teachings, which were disseminated to other Veteran Affairs Medical Center’s through the Truman HRO Academy.

This case study is limited to one hospital in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) network. As the VHA continues to deploy the methods outlined to other hospitals, the authors will perform incremental data collection and ongoing analysis for further validation of the HRO methods and operations. Hospitalists can adapt the methods in the case study for practical application in a health care setting outside of VHA. Although the model is rooted in health care, the methods may be adapted for use in other industries.

This case study overcomes the limitations within literature regarding operationalizing HRO by providing actual activities and demonstrations that can be implemented by other health care facilities.

This paper aims to center the experiences of three cohorts (n = 40) of Black high school students who participated in a critical race technology course that exposed anti-blackness as the organizing logic and default setting of digital and artificially intelligent technology. This paper centers the voices, experiences and technological innovations of the students, and in doing so, introduces a new type of digital literacy: critical race algorithmic literacy.

Data for this study include student interviews (called “talk backs”), journal reflections and final technology presentations.

Broadly, the data suggests that critical race algorithmic literacies prepare Black students to critically read the algorithmic word (e.g. data, code, machine learning models, etc.) so that they can not only resist and survive, but also rebuild and reimagine the algorithmic world.

While critical race media literacy draws upon critical race theory in education – a theorization of race, and a critique of white supremacy and multiculturalism in schools – critical race algorithmic literacy is rooted in critical race technology theory, which is a theorization of blackness as a technology and a critique of algorithmic anti-blackness as the organizing logic of schools and AI systems.

This chapter describes challenges that students, faculty and administrators at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, ITESM) experienced related to remote learning and isolation. The authors document experiences and strategies of different management teams to act flexibly in times of uncertainty and to support society in general. Ultimately, technology, experience and trust in various levels of leadership as well as horizontal and inclusive communication changed the educational status quo and strengthened the university community.

Sustainability is increasingly at the forefront of the public debate in Europe and the world. However, despite this increased interest, research seems to have partially ignored the importance of its social dimension and the issues related to social equity, people care, protection and personal development at all stages of society and, consequently, of business. Accordingly, this paper aims at investigating the “soft” dimensions of sustainability, integrating its mainstream “technical storyline” with a “human/social storyline”.

In this paper a taxonomy of the main key drivers of the soft dimension of sustainability is proposed and tested on a sample of Italian companies. Through interviews with their managers, actions and needs in terms of sustainability soft drivers are identified.

The achieved results demonstrated that the case companies differently integrated the soft dimensions of sustainability within their companies. All the sample companies are aware of the role of social sustainability. According to the proposed taxonomy, the systemic drivers of soft sustainability are the main shared ones.

The paper provides new insights into the essence of the organizational soft dimensions and their centrality in the overall achievement of sustainability for companies. It also offers managerial insights into how to effectively manage these dimensions and policy implications about the need for clearer consideration.