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This study aims to investigate the consumer behavior toward telemedicine services in India during the COVID-19 pandemic onset. With lockdown restrictions and safety concerns in visiting brick-and-mortar clinics or hospitals during the pandemic, Telemedicine had emerged as a potent alternative for seeking redressal to health issues. Based on theory and focus interviews with the telemedicine users, the researchers proposed a model to understand the intent and actual usage of telemedicine in India.

The cross-sectional study undertaken used a questionnaire designed on a seven-point Likert scale and administered to respondents with the objective of identifying the determinants of intent and actual usage of telemedicine services. Simple random sampling was used to collect primary data. The data was cleaned and finally a sample of 405 responses complete in all respects was considered for analysis. The questionnaire comprised of 34 items and following the recommendation of Hair et al. (2016), which says the minimum sample size in structural equation modeling should be ten times the number of indicator variables, a sample size of 405 was deemed adequate.

The research paper finds that performance expectancy, attitude, credibility and self-efficacy positively impact the intention of consumers to use telemedicine services. As the effort expectancy or risk perception toward telemedicine increases the intent and actual usage of telemedicine decreases. The intention to use telemedicine emerged as a strong predictor of the actual usage of telemedicine. Intent to use telemedicine was explained 81.4% by its predictors of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, attitude, risk, credibility and self-efficacy, and actual usage was explained 79.9% by its predictors. This study also reports that telemedicine was found to be popular among chronic as well as episodic patients though the preference was skewed in favor of the episodic patients. One of the advantages of telemedicine is its availability round the clock, and the study found that 8 a. m. to 12 noon time slot as the most preferred slot for seeking telemedicine services.

Chang (2004) opined that telemedicine can fulfill the needs of all stakeholders: citizens, health-care consumers, medical doctors and health-care professionals, policymakers, and so on. Considering the promise telemedicine holds, this realm must be studied and leveraged to the full potential. The study found that patients were using telemedicine even for their day-to-day aliments. This indicates a growing popularity of telemedicine and as such an opportunity for telemedicine companies to leverage it. In India, pharmaceutical companies cannot give commercial advertisements for medicines, and the same can only be sold through a registered medical practitioner’s prescription. As such there is total dependency on the medical practitioner for the sale of medicines. Telemedicine companies offer services of home delivering medicines clubbed with medical consultation thus giving them forward integration in their business models. Using telemedicine the patients had control over the timings of the services offered, and as such the waiting time to get a consultation and subsequent treatment was reduced considerably. Best medical advice from across the globe is available to the patient at less cost. Medical practitioners also stand to benefit as they can treat a variety of cases, collaborate among the medical fraternity and give consultation safely in case of fatal contagious diseases.

This study points to a definite growing popularity of telemedicine services not only in episodic patients but also chronic patients. Telemedicine with its unique advantages holds the promise to grow exponentially in the future and is a compelling health-care segment to focus on for delivering health-care solution to the geographically distant consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the use and content of written guidance produced by mental health services in England and Wales describing hospital leave for informally admitted patients.

Guidance on leave was requested from National Health Service (NHS) mental health trusts in England and health boards in Wales (n = 61) using a Freedom of Information submission. Data were analysed using content analysis.

In total, 32 organisations had a leave policy for informal patients. Policies varied considerably in content and quality. The content of policies was not supported by research evidence. Organisations appeared to have developed their policies by either adapting or copying the guidance on section 17 leave outlined in the Mental Health Act Codes of Practice for England and Wales (Department of Health, 2016; Welsh Government, 2016). Definitions of important terms, for example, leave and hospital premises, were either absent or poorly defined. Finally, some organisations appeared to be operating pseudo-legal coercive contracts to prevent informal patients from leaving hospital wards.

Research should be undertaken to explore the impact of local policies on the informal patient’s right to life and liberty.

All NHS organisations need to develop an evidence-based policy to facilitate the informal patient’s right to take leave. A set of national standards that organisations are required to comply with would help to standardise the content of leave policies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the use and content of local policies describing how informal patients can take leave from hospital.

For decades, the construction industry has not significantly changed the way it operates, despite its economic and ecological importance worldwide. Hilti’s ambition is to change that and create a better future for its customers. This chapter highlights which trade-offs Hilti faces in their innovation journey towards solutions, while transforming the organisation: speed versus involvement, agility versus perfection and relationship versus competencies. Visible leadership and the preservation of the unique Hilti culture has been critical to deal with those dualities. To create tangible results, it has proven essential to evolve structures and processes for the ‘new solution’ businesses, while changing the way of hiring people and the types of people required for those new units. Innovating the ‘Hilti way’ summarises key learnings for other organisations.

This article seeks to enhance the understanding as to why head coaches and general managers (GMs) in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) exit from their positions.

Three hypotheses were investigated using a series of quantitative and qualitative data from the past 30 years. The samples analyzed are comprised of 891 GM and coach annual observations for the NBA clubs and 949 GM and coach observations for the NFL clubs. Analyses include a logit analysis for coach exit/retention, a logit analysis for GM exit/retention and textual analysis via topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation.

Results show a correlation between a coach exiting and a GM exiting simultaneously, thus amplifying the importance of these two roles in enhancing or destroying the success of a club and supporting the need for a deeper understanding of both roles, particularly the GM. The results further highlight cultural differences across clubs in terms of GM and coach turnover, a factor that often is heavily influenced by club ownership.

The results support the role of owners in exits, confirm the importance of winning in avoiding an exit, find a high level of interrelationship between GM and coach exits and show that past culture of firings influences future exit decisions.

The aim of this paper is to improve the understanding of strategies for how established companies can respond to disruptive innovation, handle increasing complexity, facilitate entrepreneurial culture and processes and successfully manage organizational ambidexterity.

A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted to explore successful practices of innovation ambidexterity (IA) and their organizational design, entrepreneurial culture and mindset, processes and leadership. Two internationally established firms that have launched and established IA programs provided deep insight, revealing their strategy and learning on the path toward effective IA.

The findings show that accepting and managing the inherent complexity increases within an ambidextrous organization strategy is a decisive factor in achieving effective IA. As a result, segmenting small organizational units and granting them extensive autonomy is proposed for managing the complexity of an organization while increasing its effectiveness. Furthermore, it is shown that this helps foster entrepreneurial culture, mindsets and processes as additional mediators for achieving effective IA. Coaching, empowerment and trust were identified as key factors of ambidextrous leadership values that encourage entrepreneurial behavior and decision-making.

To the best of the authors knowledge the first study connecting the research fields of complexity management, organizational ambidexterity theory and entrepreneurial culture while applying the fundamentals of systems theory to propose a practical management framework for successfully responding to disruptive innovation.

This study aims to explain the effects of different types of innovations on organizational performance in terms of firms’ external effectiveness and internal efficiency. The study examines the interrelationship of technical and nontechnical innovations in complex services and the mediating effect of customer participation on the relationship between innovation type and organizational performance.

The study draws on a neo-Schumpeterian model for innovation to examine the complex service setting of healthcare provision. Data from Statistics Sweden, containing 38 hospitals and 242 primary care units in Sweden, provided the study's results.

The findings show the importance of combining different types of innovations in complex services, demonstrating a mediating effect of nontechnical innovation on both the relationship between technical innovations and external effectiveness and internal efficiency. Moreover, the results show that customer participation has a positive mediating effect for technical innovation and nontechnical innovation on external effectiveness. However, there is no such significant effect on internal efficiency.

The findings are based on self-assessment data, which has inherent limitations. The innovation data used were cross-sectional, which may lack reliability (although self-assessed data counter this risk to some extent).

Managers should pursue both technical and nontechnical innovations for gains in external effectiveness and internal efficiency. However, complex services call for technical innovations to be accompanied by nontechnical innovations to support positive effects. The results cause a dilemma for managing customer participation in complex services. As the results show customer participation resulting in external effectiveness, they also fail to establish an effect on internal efficiency.

The primary contribution is to add to the knowledge of different types of innovation in complex services by demonstrating their interdependent effects on both external effectiveness and internal efficiency. Furthermore, the study tests and advances the mediating effect of customer participation in complex services on organizational performance.

Central to the fit concept is that congruence between individual and environmental attributes leads to improved outcomes. However, when discussing fit, researchers often describe congruence as alignment between distinctive or unique individual and environmental attributes. We suggest that current approaches to examining fit do not adequately account for this assumption of distinctiveness because they fail to consider normative expectations and preferences. As such, we propose an alternative theoretical and methodological approach to conceptualizing and measuring fit.

We introduce the normative theory of fit, outline how researchers can decompose fit into distinctive and normative components and identify areas for future research.

Management researchers have largely ignored the importance of decomposing fit into distinctive and normative components. This shortcoming necessitates additional research to ensure a more accurate understanding of fit and its relationship with outcomes.

We provide a clarification and critical examination of a pervasive construct in the field of management by introducing the normative theory of fit, identifying areas where researchers can employ this theoretical lens and suggesting a reevaluation of the importance placed on differentiation that is traditionally employed in practice.

The present manuscript assesses how firms should manage frequent supply chain disruption triggers and whether these firms should use existing supply chain competencies, develop new ones or both to mitigate any adverse consequences on financial performance.

Data for the study come from a survey administered to professionals in India. India was an appropriate base for the study because of its developing economy and businesses often facing SC disruptions in the marketplace.

The findings show that the negative association between the frequency of supply chain disruption triggers and financial performance is weaker when a firm utilizes supply chain exploitation competencies. Conversely, the negative association between the frequency of supply chain disruption triggers and financial performance becomes stronger when using supply chain exploration competencies. Most significantly, however, the authors show that a strategy of supply chain ambidexterity – one that combines both exploitation and exploration practices – is more beneficial in mitigating the impact of frequent disruption triggers on firm financial performance compared to the other strategies.

These findings contribute to the literature, extending the benefits of ambidexterity beyond domains of innovation, manufacturing flexibility, competitiveness and firm performance to include mitigation of supply chain disruptions.

Skilled graduates delivered through vocational programmes are critical to ensure the future growth of emerging economies. This study explored students' reflections and experiences of online teaching and learning (T&L) during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. The study specifically focused on the transferable skills students acquired and their relevance to working in the local retail and hospitality industries.

Following a case study research design, this study retrospectively delved into the multi-perspectives of students enrolled in vocational programmes. A total of 145 students completed reflective questions via a Qualtrics link regarding the topic in question. Student reflections were grouped and analysed for recurring themes using Atlas.ti. Through thematic analysis, two topical themes emerged related to transferable skills development and the usefulness of skills for future work.

The findings suggest that although students had to rely on online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, they still developed vital transferable skills, including communication, teamwork, organisational, self-management, flexibility, technology, metacognition and problem-solving.

The findings offer valuable input into planning and developing student-centric online courses to facilitate the development of desired transferable skills. Findings could also guide best T&L practices regarding how education and training across digital platforms could be used to ensure that graduates are prepared to navigate the future complexities of working in ever-changing globalised industries.

This study provides new insights into the evolution of T&L and how unexpected situations could provide an opportunity to hone desired skills and prepare students for employment and the 21st century workplace.

This chapter presents a recent study which explored the impact of entrepreneurship education on South African tourism students' entrepreneurial intention, regarding starting a tourism-related business after graduation. The study used a structured questionnaire to collect data from randomly selected tourism students in a South African comprehensive University. Study findings show that entrepreneurship education has an influence on tourism students' entrepreneurial intentions and perceptions of desirability and feasibility. The study results moreover reveal that having entrepreneurial family background and entrepreneurship education played a role in achieving entrepreneurial attributes and desirability. The adoption of various reform programmes targeted at enhancing the graduate employability and/or self-employment, such as the inclusion of a new entrepreneurial track to the undergraduate curriculum, is one of the study's recommendations for the department of tourism studied. Students should be encouraged to apply for the entrepreneurship education track, which includes business training as well as customised coaching and mentorship sessions with accomplished businesspeople, as early as in their first academic year.