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The ongoing pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus has severely influenced lives and livelihoods. As service organizations either face hibernation or continuity of their business operations, the impact of social distancing measures raises major concerns for the well-being of service employees. In this paper, the authors develop a conceptual framework to examine how different social distancing practices impact an organization's service continuity or service hibernation, which in turn affects different dimensions of their employee subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors draw on macroeconomic data and industrial reports, linking them to theoretical concepts to develop a conceptual framework and a research agenda to serve as a starting point to fully understand the impact of this pandemic on employee well-being.

This article develops an overarching framework and research agenda to investigate the impact of social distancing practices on employee well-being.

The authors propose two opposing business concepts – service continuity and service hibernation – as possible responses to social distancing measures. By bridging different theoretical domains, the authors suggeste that there is a need to holistically examine macro-, meso- and micro-level factors to fully understand the impact of social distancing–related measures on employee well-being.

Using data from a continuous and ongoing cross-sectional web survey on hospitalisation service experiences in two Italian regions, the authors used multilevel and multivariate logistic regression models to identify factors related to users' demographics, emotional and informative support, technical and physical aspects of the provision, influencing satisfaction and willingness-to-recommend, before and during a crisis.

The value-in-use, defined in terms of a positive or negative value given by the experience with services, can be evaluated by users and influenced by the context of provision. The authors tested whether and how the value-in-use of services changed in a context of crisis. This study is applied to the healthcare sector during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, by evaluating the impact of the pandemic on hospitalisation experience.

Overall, analyses of 8,712 questionnaires found a greater value after the pandemic spread. In a time of crisis, technical and informative aspects of care were found to be most valued by patients that may recognise the extraordinary professionalism of workers during the crisis.

This study empirically suggests that context can affect the evaluation of value-in-use by patients during unprecedented circumstances, producing additional value-in-context.

These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

The level of healthcare system distress, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, positively affects patients' propensity to recommend, which the authors suggest is driven by healthcare services' feelings of reverse compassion. These findings imply that during critical periods where there is less scope for expressions of gratitude and appreciation towards front-line workers, user-reported data can be used for motivating professionals and increase resilience, which can have positive social implications. These results reiterate the need to continue collecting and reporting the service users' voices, including as activity within plans for managing challenging situations.

Research based on the intersection of theoretical and empirical research regarding value-in-use, value-in-context and service quality measured through user experience is scarce, in particular in the healthcare sector. The authors' findings set the direction for future research on the influence of context on value creation and value creation's perception by users, on the concept of reverse compassion and on reverse compassion's impact on organisational well-being, particularly in times of crisis.

Fear of COVID-19 is a new workplace hazard that has made drastic changes at workplaces globally. Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, this research investigates the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and employee engagement. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and employee engagement.

Data were collected using self-administrated questionnaires from bank employees located in different cities of Pakistan. PROCESS macro by Hayes et al. (2017) was used to analyze 267 valid responses.

Consistent with the hypotheses of this study, fear of COVID-19 was negatively associated with employee engagement. In addition, the moderating role of emotional stability was confirmed in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and employee engagement. The findings of this study support the notion that fear of COVID-19 can be considered a workplace stressor that affects employee engagement. By contrast, emotional stability acts as a personal resource with a buffering effect.

This study investigates only the moderating mechanism in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and work engagement. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect the data. For future studies, other sources can be used to reflect the actual situation.

This study is currently relevant because of the sudden occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic that has mentally and emotionally challenged the service employees. Unlike most prior studies, which investigated the impact of fear of COVID-19 on the health sector professionals, this study investigated the impact on the bank employees. Moreover, this study is among the first to provide insights on the role of employee's personality to maintain positive work attitudes during uncertain circumstances from COVID-19.

As the world tries to come to terms with the exact economic and human cost of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses are trying to discern and act on the implications of the “new normal” in order to survive and grow. Amongst all the industries impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, travel and tourism has been the hardest hit. Operators across the value chain are trying to innovate and improvise in order to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on cash flows and working capital. The primary purpose of this paper then is to take a closer look at the measures adopted by the Indian hotel industry to restore revenues, conserve resources and attain greater operational and cost efficiencies in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. The article also brings to the fore the growth-enhancing measures adopted by the industry in anticipation of a “new normal” in the post-Covid world.

This study is based on primary data collected via a survey, followed by a series of interviews with a select group of senior finance managers from a wide spectrum of hotels based in India.

Our findings suggest that Indian hotels have adopted several measures to enhance cash flows/revenues, reduce operating costs and cash outflows and conserve resources in order to tide themselves over during the crisis. Prominent cash flow–enhancing measures include price drops on special offers and reductions on list prices. Cost-cutting measures include economizing on energy consumption, reductions in labour costs and the postponement of maintenance expenses and discretionary spending. Resource conservation measures that have been adopted focus on postponement of capital expenditure and an increasing shift to localizing supply chains. Growth-enhancing measures adopted by the industry in anticipation of the long-term “new normal” include restructuring of the workforce and measures aimed at attracting domestic tourists and increasing product diversity.

This study attempts to understand the short-term and long-term financial management strategies adopted by Indian hotels in the face of unprecedented disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind in the Indian context.

This study aims to focus on a specific project marketing concept, i.e. “discontinuity,” and analyzes how this concept emerged in project marketing, becoming its key scholarly embodiment, how it became decoupled from the increasingly service-intensive project business practice and what the relevance of discontinuity is for project marketers moving forward.

This study is built on a systematic literature review of 31 years (1993–2023) of publishing data from major marketing and management journals.

This study provides three findings. First, the author reveals the risks related to marketing scholars and practitioners losing sight of each other as business practices evolve much faster than scholarly research can keep up. Second, the author highlights the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing conceptual innovations. Finally, the research elucidates the need for broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.

The aim of this study is not to criticize project marketing, as many strands of business-to-business (B2B) marketing face the same challenge, but to elucidate a need for conceptual innovations, collaboration with practitioners and other disciplines and broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.

This study makes several contributions to the project marketing research tradition. First, it reviews the emergence and dissipation of the concept of discontinuity, drawing on semantical, etymological and epistemological insights. It also reflects on recent disruptions in the marketplace and envisions future research trajectories for this elusive concept. In addition, the author develops a conceptual framework that combines project types with exchange elements in project and service businesses. This conceptual framework helps elucidate what part of the exchange is continuing and what is discontinuing in the resulting business relationships. Furthermore, the research contributes to B2B marketing more broadly by highlighting the fleeting correspondence between theory and the real world. It underscores the need for constant updates to maintain relevance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore more agile and effective learning processes that help identify potentially high-performing staff during workplace training.

To test the efficacy of the learning-oriented assessment (LOA) process in workplace training, a pharmaceutical sales organization implemented an online training over three months that was modeled with the LOA process. During work hours, employees within the organization took two tests (one before and after training) as well as participated in training with essential work-related content, where they were given problem sets and scenarios to complete that would vary based on their responses. Their assessment scores, formative learning behaviors and quarterly revenue were recorded to determine the effects of the training.

The outcome of this study supported the theory that the LOA model would facilitate the acquisition and application of knowledge differentially between employees of the organization, and this knowledge would serve to improve the performance of the employees to the extent that it increased revenue.

This study was a field experiment that did not allow for the control of possible confounds. However, the real-world real people outcomes provide novel insights on best practices in workplace training.

The findings of this study showed the short-term effectiveness of the LOA process in professional knowledge acquisition and application in relevant skills that increase organizational revenue.

This study provides an applied understanding on the applicability of the LOA process in workplace learning and training which has not been previously investigated.

Purpose: Green computing is a way of using the computer resource in an eco-friendly while maintaining and decreasing the harmful environmental impact. Minimising toxic materials and reducing energy usage can also be used to recycle the product.

Need for the Study: The motivation of the study is to use green computing resources to decrease carbon emissions and their adverse effect on the environment.

Methodology: The study uses a qualitative method of collecting resources and data to address the opportunities, challenges, and future trends in green computing for Sustainable Future Technologies. The study focusses on multiple kinds of cloud computing services collected and executed into single remote servers. The service demand processor offers these services to the client per their needs. The simultaneous requests to access the cloud services, processing and expertly managing these requests by the processors are discussed and analysed.

Findings: The findings suggest that green computing is an upcoming and most promising area. The number of resources employed for green computing can be beneficial for lowering E-waste so that computing can be environmentally friendly and self-sustainable.

Practical Implications: Green computing applies across all industries and service sectors like healthcare, entertainment, tourism, and education. The convergence of technologies like Cloud Computing, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT) is greatly impacting Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) market.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the last time a crisis affected businesses worldwide by putting economies into hibernation was in 1918 – the Great Influenza Pandemic. Environmental, social and governance frameworks require businesses to respond to such crises as it significantly changes the business environment. With approximately 2.84 million accountants existing across 130 countries, this study aims to determine whether the accounting profession responded to this crisis. As these responses can provide insights into the type of activities accountants performed during the lockdown, the authors analysed them for emerging themes and identified changes in the way that accountants performed tasks.

Using search engines, the authors examined publicly available secondary sources such as websites of professional bodies, the Big Four and mid-tier accounting firms and government organisations using the keyword “COVID-19” to identify responses on issues faced by accountants during the 2020 lockdown period in New Zealand. The authors used interpretive text analysis to examine the responses for emerging themes.

The accountants’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic emphasised information technology and soft skills but most importantly the interaction, integration and immersion of technical skills with information technology and soft skills. The findings also highlight changes in the way accountants performed their tasks.

The study insights enable accounting academics to better understand the interconnection between hard and soft skills for incorporating it in syllabi, thereby preparing students for future roles. In addition, the study findings will assist both practitioners and researchers to explore the emerging changes in the way accountants perform their tasks.

Literature seldom admits the importance of historical contingency and politics in the creation of hybrid organisations. Nevertheless, the circumstances of their creation play a pivotal role in the subsequent operation, priorities and success of these prolific organisations. Through a single case study, this paper aims to explore the connection between the multiple and concurrent crises that created London Transport and the subsequent balance of its institutional logics.

This case study uses in-depth data collection from multiple archival and public sources to offer quantitative and qualitative analysis of the priorities, logics and services offered by London Transport before and after its transition from a private to a hybrid organisation.

Providing London’s transport via a quasi-autonomous non-governmental monopoly was justified as being more efficient than competition. However, by applying accounting ratios to the archival records from London Transport, the authors find that there were few decisive efficiencies gained from amalgamation. Instead, the authors argue that the balance of institutional logics within the new, unified organisation showed a political response outwardly addressing market failure but primarily concerned with marginalising democratic control. This reality was obscured behind the rhetoric of rationality and efficiency as politically neutral justifications for creating a public service monopoly.

This paper challenges supposedly objective systems for judging the effectiveness of “hybrid” organisations and offers an alternative political and historical perspective of the reasons for their creation. The authors suggest that London Transport’s success in obscuring its enduring market-based institutional logics has wider resonance in the development of municipal capitalism.