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The purpose of this paper is to define the impact of training and development (T&D) in the Visegrad countries (V4) as impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, namely, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. These countries have some political, cultural, social and economic similarities and share some common ground in the human resource development (HRD) sectors.

The authors used the HRD theory and the human capital theory to analyse the context, operations and impact of T&D in the V4 countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The research was conducted in 400 companies, 100 from each of the four countries using the computer assisted web interviewing technique. The questionnaire was in a six-point Likert scale format and addressed 12 topics related to T&D: policy, expectations, procedures of diagnosis, preparation, implementation, monitoring, trainees, trainers, investment and expenditures, evaluation, results and controlling.

The authors concluded that in the Visegrad countries, Covid-19 raised expectations on T&D. This was followed by increased levels of action in diagnosis, preparation, monitoring and implementation, following pre-existing and adjusted policies. Evaluation and control were complicated. Investment and results and the human side of the T&D (trainees and trainers) were the ones for which there were more uncertainties and perplexities.

The study has the limitation of using only a small sample in four countries. For further research, the authors suggest a larger study extended to all the European Union countries, an in-depth analysis of the current data and the kurtosis on Policy of T&D.

The results of the research can be used to improve T&D programs after the Covid-19 pandemic. They could also provide information to external trainers to improve and adjust their services according to the opinions of the respondents of the study. The research findings can also serve institutions responsible for policy provision of HRD at a national level by providing possibilities to apply for funding either within national or regional funds like the National Training Fund in Poland or within European Union money at a national level.

The study is original because even if the T&D in V4 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic had already been studied separately (e.g. Mikołajczyk, 2021; Vrabcová, Urbancová 2021; Vinichenko et al., 2021), no empirical, cross-national research analysing specifically the T&D in those countries has been carried out so far. The authors use an innovative methodology, addressing 12 topics and the people involved together with the stages in which a T&D policy is divided. That makes it innovative and very relevant.

Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response is crucial for effectively managing medical centres, staff allocation and casualty distribution during emergencies. To address this issue, this study aims to introduce a multi-objective stochastic programming model to enhance disaster preparedness and response, focusing on the critical first 72 h after earthquakes. The purpose is to optimize the allocation of resources, temporary medical centres and medical staff to save lives effectively.

This study uses stochastic programming-based dynamic modelling and a discrete-time Markov Chain to address uncertainty. The model considers potential road and hospital damage and distance limits and introduces an a-reliability level for untreated casualties. It divides the initial 72 h into four periods to capture earthquake dynamics.

Using a real case study in Istanbul’s Kartal district, the model’s effectiveness is demonstrated for earthquake scenarios. Key insights include optimal medical centre locations, required capacities, necessary medical staff and casualty allocation strategies, all vital for efficient disaster response within the critical first 72 h.

This study innovates by integrating stochastic programming and dynamic modelling to tackle post-disaster medical response. The use of a Markov Chain for uncertain health conditions and focus on the immediate aftermath of earthquakes offer practical value. By optimizing resource allocation amid uncertainties, the study contributes significantly to disaster management and HT research.

The higher-level aim of this study is to investigate the impact of health information needs satisfaction on the fear of COVID-19 for the general population. The investigation is theoretically grounded on Wilsons’ model of information seeking in the context of inquesting the reasons for seeking health information as well as the information sources the general population deploy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This cross-sectional survey examines the correlations between health information seeking behavior and the COVID-19 generated fear in the general population through the application of a specially designed structured questionnaire which was distributed online. The questionnaire comprised four main distinct research dimensions (i.e. information needs, information sources, obstacles when seeking information and COVID-19 generated fear) that present significant validity levels.

Individuals were motivated to seek COVID-related health information to cope with the pandemic generated uncertainty. Information needs satisfaction as well as digital health literacy levels is associated with the COVID-19 generated fear in the general population. Finally, a conceptual framework based on Wilsons’ macro-model for information seeking behavior was developed to illustrate information needs satisfaction during the pandemic period. These results indicate the need for incentives to enhance health information needs satisfaction appropriately.

The COVID-19 generated fear in the general population is studied through the information seeking behavior lenses. A well-studied theoretical model for information seeking behavior is adopted for health-related information seeking during pandemic. Finally, digital health information literacy levels are also associated with the fear of COVID-19 reported in the authors’ survey.

The interaction between evaluators is underestimated in legitimacy literature. This study aims to examine the impact of CEO celebrity on initial public offerings (IPOs) underpricing in Strategic Emerging Industries (SEIs). Based on legitimacy and limited attention effect, this study introduces a new antecedent to the asset pricing literature under a particular sample.

This paper illustrates how CEO celebrity promotes IPO underpricing by enhancing the legitimacy and then explores how the CEO characteristics can moderate this relationship. Using 1,128 IPO companies in China SEIs from 2010 to 2019, cross-section data is used to build a multiple linear regression model to test the hypotheses.

The result indicates that CEO celebrity is positively related to IPO underpricing. Founder CEO and CEO duality amplify the relationship. Further analysis shows that the relationship between CEO celebrity and IPO underpricing is more pronounced in firms with high Baidu search and low market sentiment.

This study provides insights into how CEO celebrity as notable internal information shapes the formation of investors' preliminary impressions of firms. The evidence consists of legitimacy and limited attention perspective by showing how investors favor, follow and hype the stocks with celebrity CEOs. The results extend the knowledge about how CEO characteristics influence information frictions in asset pricing during IPO.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the information needs satisfaction of visual art teachers affects their creativity. Visual art teachers’ information seeking behaviour and specifically the association of information needs satisfaction with creativity has been an understudied area, despite competent information seeking being considered essential for high quality practices of art teachers.

A questionnaire survey was developed addressing the information seeking behaviour of art teachers, informed by Wilson’s model (1981), including visual art teachers’ information needs, information resources, obstacles faced while seeking information and the perceived impact of information needs satisfaction on visual art teachers’ creativity.

The study included 298 visual art teachers in Greece. The results demonstrated that the key information needs of art teachers were mainly related to materials’ properties, techniques for creating artwork and artwork promotion methods. Online information sources were the preferred sources of art information, followed by colleagues, personal collections and visits to galleries and museums. Our study identified lack of time, lack of specialized libraries and copyright, as the main barriers to information seeking.

Information about art plays a substantial role in visual art education, while visual art teachers’ information needs satisfaction positively influences their creative endeavours. There is a need to further explore the digital information needs of visual art teachers.

Needs for information literacy, disparities in society, bridging digital divides, richness of information sources in electronic (e-)environments and the value of dictionaries have often been propagated. To improve information sources and information literacy training, information behaviour must be understood (i.e. all information activities). This paper conceptualises new opportunities for information sources (e.g. electronic dictionaries) to all society sectors, dictionary literacy and research lenses such as lexicography to supplement information literacy and behaviour research.

A scoping review of information literacy and behaviour, lexicography and dictionary literature grounds the conceptualisation of dictionary literacy, its alignment with information literacy, information activities and information behaviour and lexicography as additional research lens.

Research lenses must acknowledge dictionary use in e-environments, information activities and skills, meanings of information and dictionary literacy, the value of e-dictionaries, alignment with information behaviour research that guides the development of information sources and interdisciplinary research from, e.g. lexicography – thus contextualisation.

Research implications – information behaviour and information literacy research can be enriched by lexicography as research lens. Further conceptualisation could align information behaviour, information literacy and dictionary literacy.

Dictionary training, aligned with information literacy training, can be informed by this paper.

The value of dictionary literacy for all sectors of societies can be improved.

Large bodies of literature on information behaviour and lexicography individually do not cover combined insights from both.

Culture is considered a critical aspect of social media usage. The purpose of this paper is to explore how cultures and languages influence multilingual users' cross-cultural information sharing patterns.

This study used a crowdsourcing survey with Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 355 multilingual users who utilize two or more languages daily. A mixed-method approach combined statistical, and cluster analysis with thematic analysis was employed to analyze information sharing patterns among multilingual users in the Chinese cultural context.

It was found that most multilingual users surveyed preferred to share in their first and second language mainly because that is what others around them speak or use. Multilingual users have more diverse sharing characteristics and are more actively engaged in social media. The results also provide insights into what incentives make multilingual users engage in social media to share information related to Chinese culture with the MOA model. Finally, the ten motivation factors include learning, entertainment, empathy, personal gain, social engagement, altruism, self-expression, information, trust and sharing culture. One opportunity factor is identified, which is convenience. Three ability factors are recognized consist of self-efficacy, habit and personality.

The findings are conducive to promoting the active participation of multilingual users in online communities, increasing global resource sharing and information flow and promoting the consumption of digital cultural content.

Social media have been playing a critical role in seeking and sharing health related information and consequently shaping individuals’ health behaviors. This study investigates how information seeking about Covid-19 vaccine on social media is related to vaccine receiving intentions. The study furthers explores the association of trust in social media and uncertainty about Covid-19 with information seeking and the moderating role of prior social media experience on this association.

We developed a questionnaire and collected data from 525 educated social media users through “Google Forms.” Further, we applied ordinary least squares (OLS) regress to test the study hypothesis.

We noted that trust in social media and uncertainty about Covid-19 vaccine positively influenced information seeking which further positively affected vaccine receiving intentions. However, the moderating effect of prior social media experience was not only noted as weak but also found negatively affecting the associations of trust in social media and uncertainty about Covid-19 vaccine with information seeking.

The findings provide insights into understanding of public perceptions regarding Covid-19 vaccine in the cultural contexts of a developing country. Further, it informs about the public patterns of seeking information related to health issues on social media, an understanding which may likely benefit policymakers, health care providers and researchers to understand the antecedents and behavioral outcomes of seeking information through social media during health crisis. The study also elucidates the leveraging power of social media to motivate the public to accept the Covid-19 vaccines.

The study uniquely combines the antecedents and behavioral outcomes of information seeking through social media in the particular context of Covid-19. It further extends the literature by introducing the conditional role of prior social media experience.

The purpose of this research is to examine the narratives of victims of abusive supervision. We explore the meaning or “lessons” victims derive from those experiences and how they shape the victims’ views of self, work and organization in relation to navigating their subsequent jobs.

We analyzed how appraisals of supervisory abuse transform victims’ narratives and their consequent work attitudes through sensemaking processes. Semi-structured interviews with the past victims of abusive supervision generated a four-stage model of how sensemaking shapes victims’ future work attitudes. Our interpretations were guided through narrative thematic analysis based on the constructionist approach.

Victims’ lessons learned are predominantly framed by their retrospective post-event appraisal of abuse (based on its severity) once individuals are no longer subject to abusive supervision. With greater distance from the abuse, victims can process the abuse and better understand the motivation of the abuser, enabling the process of causal attributions. These attributions further shape victims’ narratives and future work attitudes through a complex interplay of retrospective and prospective sensemaking mechanisms. The victims broadly reported proactive (with higher self-awareness and endurance) and reactive (self-protection, and emotional scars) lessons. A four-stage model was proposed based on our findings.

Abusive supervision remains a persistent issue experienced by many individuals at some point in their working life. However, little is known about how victims make sense of the event post-abuse and how this sense-making guides their future work behaviors. Understanding this phenomenon provides insight into how employees navigate through adversity and construct a more positive future. The contribution of this narrative inquiry is threefold. First, it explores how individual appraisals of supervisory abuse frame their (1) mechanisms of narrative construction; and (2) future work attitudes. Second, our findings demonstrate how narrative construction is a fluid process often informed by the process of retrospective and prospective sensemaking. Finally, our research suggests two broader categories of lessons that victims internalize and carry forward to their subsequent jobs.

Based on the social interaction theory and trust theory, this study investigates the switching of users on social question and answer (Q&A) platforms from knowledge seekers to knowledge contributors.

We used Python to gather data from Zhihu, performed hypothesis testing on the models using Poisson regression and finally conducted a mediation effect analysis.

The findings reveal that knowledge seeking impacts users' motivation for information interaction, emotional interaction and trust. Notably, information interaction and trust exhibit a chained mediation effect that subsequently influences knowledge contribution.

Current studies on user knowledge behavior typically examine individual actions, rarely connecting knowledge seeking and knowledge contribution. However, the balance of knowledge inflow and outflow is crucial for social Q&A platforms. To cover this gap, this paper empirically investigates the switching between knowledge seeking and knowledge contribution based on the social interaction theory and trust theory.