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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused financial stress and limited their lending agility, resulting in more non-performing loans (NPLs) and lower performance during the II wave of the coronavirus crisis. Therefore, it is essential to identify the risky factors influencing the financial performance of Indian banks spanning 2018–2022.

Our sample consists of a balanced panel dataset of 75 scheduled commercial banks from three different ownership groups, including public, private and foreign banks, that were actively engaged in their operations during 2018–2022. Factor identification is performed via a fixed-effects model (FEM) that solves the issue of heterogeneity across different with banks over time. Additionally, to ensure the robustness of our findings, we also identify the risky drivers of the financial performance of Indian banks using an alternative measure, the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model.

Empirical evidence indicates that default risk, solvency risk and COVAR reduce financial performance in India. However, high liquidity, Z-score and the COVID-19 crisis enhance the financial performance of Indian banks. Unsystematic risk and systemic risk factors play an important role in determining the prognosis of COVID-19. The study supports the “bad-management,” “moral hazard” and “tail risk spillover of a single bank to the system” hypotheses. Public sector banks (PSBs) have considerable potential to achieve financial performance while controlling unsystematic risk and exogenous shocks relative to their peer group. Finally, robustness check estimates confirm the coefficients of the main model.

This study contributes to the knowledge in the banking literature by identifying risk factors that may affect financial performance during a crisis nexus and providing information about preventive measures. These insights are valuable to bankers, academics, managers and regulators for policy formulation. The findings of this paper provide important insights by considering all the risk factors that may be responsible for reducing the probability of financial performance in the banking system of an emerging market economy.

The empirical analysis has been done with a fresh perspective to consider unsystematic risk, systemic risk and exogenous risk (COVID-19) with the financial performance of Indian banks. Furthermore, none of the existing banking literature explicitly explores the drivers of the I and II waves of COVID-19 while considering COVID-19 as a dependent variable. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to make efforts in this direction.

This study aims to test the market anomaly of herding behavior driven by the response to supply chain disruptions in extreme market conditions such as those observed during COVID-19. The authors empirically test the response of the capital market participants for B2B firms, resulting in herding behavior.

Using the event study approach based on the market model, the authors test the impact of supply chain disruptions and resultant herding behavior across six sectors and among different B2B firms. The authors used cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) and cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) to examine the significance of herding behavior across sectors.

The event study results show a significant effect of COVID-19 due to supply chain disruptions across specific sectors. Herding was detected across the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. The authors also provide evidence of sector-specific disruption impact and herding behavior based on the black swan event and social learning theory.

The authors examine the impact of COVID-19 on herding in the stock market of an emerging economy due to extreme market conditions. This is one of the first studies analyzing lockdown-driven supply chain disruptions and subsequent sector-specific herding behavior. Investors and regulators should take sector-specific responses that are sophisticated during extreme market conditions, such as a pandemic, and update their responses as the situation unfolds.

This study aims to explore the management learning during a long-term crisis like a pandemic. The paper addresses both what health-care managers have learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the management learning is characterized.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic at two different public hospitals in Sweden. The study, conducted with semi-structured interviews, applies a combination of within-case analysis and cross-case comparison. The data were analyzed using thematic deductive analysis with the themes, i.e. sensemaking, decision-making and meaning-making.

The COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by uncertainty and a need for continuous learning among the managers at the case hospitals. The learning process that arose was circular in nature, wherein trust played a crucial role in facilitating the flow of information and enabling the managers to get a good sense of the situation. This, in turn, allowed the managers to make decisions meaningful for the organization, which improved the trust for the managers. This circular process was iterated with higher frequency than usual and was a prerequisite for the managers’ learning. The practical implications are that a combined management with hierarchical and distributed management that uses the normal decision routes seems to be the most successful management method in a prolonged crisis as a pandemic.

The gained knowledge can benefit hospital organizations, be used in crisis education and to develop regional contingency plans for pandemics.

This study has explored learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and found a circular process, “the management learning wheel,” which supports management learning in prolonged crises.

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in assisting firms in their response to public emergency crises under the integrated view of government emergency response.

Using event study and survival analysis method, the authors examine whether CSR can act as a stock price stabilizer for companies from China by splitting the stock price fluctuations into two phases – CSR price insurance, which decrease the shock on stock prices during the emergency crisis, and CSR price recovery, which helps stock prices rebound faster during the postcrisis phase.

The authors’ empirical results confirm the stabilizer role of CSR during crisis and that effective government response can strengthen such effect. Furthermore, the authors examine the different aspects of the government’s response and the impact of multiple waves of public emergency.

This study provides empirical evidence on the topic of CSR and the government’s response to public emergency under the emerging context.

This study aims to answer the question: What dynamic capabilities do diverse humanitarian organizations have?

We examine this question through the lens of dynamic capabilities with sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capacities. The research team interviewed 15 individuals from 12 humanitarian organizations that had (a) different geographic scopes (global versus local) and (b) different missions (emergency response versus long-term development aid). We also gathered data from secondary sources, including standard operating procedures, company websites, and news databases (Factiva, Reuters and Bloomberg).

The findings identify the operational and dynamic capabilities of global and local humanitarian organizations while distinguishing between their mission to provide long-term development aid or emergency relief. (1) The global organizations, with their beneficiary responsiveness, reconfigured their sensing and seizing capacities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by pivoting quickly to local procurement or regional supply chains. The long-term development organizations pivoted to multi-year supplier agreements with fixed pricing to counter price uncertainty and accessed social capital with government bodies. In contrast, emergency response organizations developed end-to-end supply chain visibility to sense changes in supply and demand. (2) Local humanitarian organizations developed the capacity to sense demand and supply changes to reconfigure based on their experiential learning working with the local community. The long-term-development local organizations used un-owned and scalable relief infrastructure to seize opportunities to rebuild affected areas. In contrast, emergency response organizations developed their capacity to seize opportunities to provide aid stemming from their decentralized decision-making, a lack of structured procedures, and the authority for increased expenditure.

We propose a theoretical framework to identify humanitarian organizations' operational and dynamic capabilities, distinguishing between global and local organizations and their emergency response and long-term aid missions.

The study explored whether an asynchronous short online course in mental health well-being and resilience for healthcare workers (HCWs) showed improved self-reported results among participants during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A descriptive cross-sectional study evaluated the course outcomes using the 10-item Connor and Davison's Resilience Scale, the World Health Organization's WHO-five well-being index and self-developed questions. Data were collected via online questionnaires before and after course completion.

A total of 1 301 HCWs participated. The highest proportion of participants was from South Africa (SA) (93.7%) and females (78.7%). Analysed mean pre- and post-training scores showed increased scores in all five domains: knowledge, confidence in course outcomes, behaviour, resilience and well-being. Confidence in the course outcomes was the only common significant construct for both well-being and resilience. Mindfulness activities (β = 0.12, 95%CI [0.032, 0.213], p = 0.008) and self-care behaviours (β = 0.14, 95%CI [0.035, 0.241], p = 0.009) were significant predictors of participants' well-being. Coping mechanisms for stress (β = 0.12, 95%CI [0.036, 0.21], p = 0.006) and connecting with a social support network (β = 0.085, 95%CI [0.0007, 0.17], p = 0.048) were significant predictors of participants' resilience. Those working in the private sector, those working in clinical settings and those who were female showed significant associations with well-being and resilience.

The results are self-reported data which may be susceptible to social desirability and acquiescent effects. There are no guarantees that positive effects observed during this study are sustained over time. The study sample was selective in that it excluded those who did not consent for the use of their data and those who did not complete the course.

The research is noteworthy as literature shows that female HCWs tend to have worse mental health outcomes than males in the same field. Online learning can enable HCWs to conveniently access mental health education, accommodate their work commitments and explore topics that are potentially stigmatising.

This paper aims to examine the impact of announcements related to 77 interventions by 46 listed Indian pharmaceutical firms during COVID-19 on the abnormal returns of the firms. The study also finds the variables which explain cumulative abnormal returns (CARs).

This study uses standard event methodology to compute the abnormal returns of firms announcing pharmaceutical interventions in 2020 and 2021. Besides this, the multilayer perceptron technique is applied to identify the variables that influence the CARs of the sample firms.

The results show the presence of abnormal returns of 0.64% one day before the announcement, indicating information leakage. The multilayer perceptron approach identifies five variables that explain the CARs of the sample companies, which are licensing_age, licensing_size, size, commercialization_age and approval_age.

The study contributes to the efficient market literature by revealing how firm-specific nonfinancial disclosures affect stock prices, especially in times of crisis like pandemics. Prior research focused on determining the effect of COVID-19 variables on abnormal returns. This is the first research to use artificial neural networks to determine which firm-specific variables and pharmaceutical interventions can influence CARs.

This paper aims to analyze the connectedness between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock market index and cryptocurrencies. It investigates the relevant impact of RavenPack COVID sentiment on the dynamic of stock market indices and conventional cryptocurrencies as well as their Islamic counterparts during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors rely on the methodology of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) to construct network-associated measures. Then, the wavelet coherence model was applied to explore co-movements between GCC stock markets, cryptocurrencies and RavenPack COVID sentiment. As a robustness check, the authors used the time-frequency connectedness developed by Barunik and Krehlik (2018) to verify the direction and scale connectedness among these markets.

The results illustrate the effect of COVID-19 on all cryptocurrency markets. The time variations of stock returns display stylized fact tails and volatility clustering for all return series. This stressful period increased investor pessimism and fears and generated negative emotions. The findings also highlight a high spillover of shocks between RavenPack COVID sentiment, Islamic and conventional stock return indices and cryptocurrencies. In addition, we find that RavenPack COVID sentiment is the main net transmitter of shocks for all conventional market indices and that most Islamic indices and cryptocurrencies are net receivers.

This study provides two main types of implications: On the one hand, it helps fund managers adjust the risk exposure of their portfolio by including stocks that significantly respond to COVID-19 sentiment and those that do not. On the other hand, the volatility mechanism and investor sentiment can be interesting for investors as it allows them to consider the dynamics of each market and thus optimize the asset portfolio allocation.

This finding suggests that the RavenPack COVID sentiment is a net transmitter of shocks. It is considered a prominent channel of shock spillovers during the health crisis, which confirms the behavioral contagion. This study also identifies the contribution of particular interest to fund managers and investors. In fact, it helps them design their portfolio strategy accordingly.

The purpose of this paper spans twofold. Firstly, to investigate Human Resource Management practices (HRMP) adopted by organisations during the pandemic. Secondly, to bundle similar HRMP into Human Resource Management (HRM) bundles that provided unhindered organisational support to employees during the crisis.

The authors conducted 39 in-depth interviews across industries using a semi-structured interview schedule. Thereafter, the authors transcribed the interviews verbatim and analysed them thematically using MAXQDA 2021.

The study identifies effective practices during times of uncertainty and how soft HRM practices helped organisations survive during a crisis. When bundled together, these practices enabled organisations to continue operations during the pandemic, keeping their employees engaged and motivated.

Based on the learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic, the study provides a toolkit of HRMP bundles that organisations can adopt for future crisis management, enhancing the organisations’ absorptive capacity.

The study investigates the practices incorporated during COVID-19, leading to the identification of soft HRM bundles. The study adds value to the existing domain of HRM by including a unique set of soft HRMP bundles that have not been discussed in earlier studies and could be of high utility to organisations during the crisis.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic adversely affected small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India. Amongst the challenges faced were the adjustments required in leadership skills to address pandemic-induced technological changes and the necessity for employee skill upgrading. This study examined the factors that influenced organisational performance in Indian SMEs, particularly in the context of the digital transformations that were brought about by the pandemic.

The study employed a cross-sectional design to investigate a set of hypotheses that were formulated to understand the relationships amongst digital leadership, digital training, empowerment and organisational performance. The data were collected during the pandemic from 487 employees who were working in various SMEs in India. Questionnaires were distributed through email and social media platforms, and electronic consent was obtained from each participant.

The study's findings indicated positive associations amongst digital leadership, digital training, empowerment and organisational performance. They also highlighted the mediating role of empowerment in these relationships. Furthermore, organisational resilience was found to positively moderate the relationship between empowerment and performance.

The study stands amongst the pioneers in exploring the role of digital leadership and digital training during the pandemic and their impact on employee empowerment amongst SMEs in a developing country.