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The uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 has forced employees to use telework technologies and platforms to perform different tasks, that is, “mandatory telework”. COVID-19 is a unique situation that has shocked economies and societies and led to a reshaping of the perception of employees and firms about work practices. However, due to the recent nature of the phenomenon, it is not usually understood how employees would cope with this forced change. Thus, the study aims to explore COVID-19 awareness and employees’ behavior toward mandatory telework.

A sample of 201 Danish employees was selected to examine the research questions using partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling.

The findings show that COVID-19 awareness reduces technological anxiety and increases positive attitudes and job satisfaction. The authors have also found the full and partially mediating role of attitude and technological anxiety on the relationship between COVID-19 awareness and job satisfaction.

The study employed the theoretical lens of job demands-resources theory to understand COVID-19 awareness and technological anxiety dynamics on employees’ attitudes toward mandatory telework and job satisfaction during the pandemic.

Cities evolved into quite complex urban systems. The rigid management process must reflect the complexity of the current political, social, and economic environment. With the vast city growth, citizens experience new difficulties – traffic congestion, pollution, immigration, overcrowding, and inadequate services.

In our research, we analyze problems and benefits that occur with the growing complexity and offer a new concept considering every city as a live and constantly developing complex adaptive system of many participants and actors that operate in an uncertain environment. These actors (residents, businesses, transport, energy, water supply providers, entertainment, and others) are the main elements of city life.

The new concept of “Smart City 5.0” is based on a previously developed model of Smart City 4.0 (compared with Industry 4.0) and implements the Urban Digital Ecosystem, where every element can be represented by a smart agent operating on its behalf. It is shown that smart services can interact vertically and horizontally in the proposed ecosystem, supporting competition and cooperation behavior based on specialized network protocols for balancing the conflicting interests of different city actors.

The chapter describes the design principles and the general architecture of the Urban Digital Ecosystem, including the basic agent of smart service, protocols of the agent’s negotiation, the architecture, and basic principles Smart City knowledge base.

The developed evolutionary methodology of implementation will ensure a minimum of disruptions to city services during its transformation into an urban ecosystem to harmoniously balance all spheres of life and the contradictory interests of different city actors.

Regardless of the diverse research on big data analytics (BDA) across different supply chains, little attention has been paid to exploit this information across service supply chains. The healthcare supply chains, where supply chain operations consume the second highest expenditures, have not completely attained the potential gains from data analytics. So, this paper explores the challenges of BDA at various levels of healthcare supply chains.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this research explores the various challenges of big data at organizational and operational level of different nodes in healthcare supply chains. To demonstrate the links among supply chain nodes, the authors have used a supplier-input-process-output-customer (SIPOC) chart to list healthcare suppliers, inputs (such as employees) supplied and used by the main healthcare processes, outputs (products and services) of these processes, and customers (patients and community).

Using thematic analysis, the authors were able to identify numerous challenges and commonalities among these challenges for the case of healthcare supply chains across United Arab Emirates (UAE). An applicable exploration on organizational (Socio-technical) and operational challenges to BDA can enable healthcare managers to acclimate efficient and effective strategies.

The identified common socio-technical and operational challenges could be verified, and their impacts on the sustainable performance of various supply chains should be explored using formal research methods.

This research advances the body of literature on BDA in healthcare supply chains in that (1) it presents a structured approach for exploring the challenges from various stakeholders of healthcare chain; (2) it presents the most common challenges of big data across the chain and finally (3) it uses the context of UAE where government is focusing on medical tourism in the coming years.

Originality of this work stems from the fact that most of the previous academic research in this area has focused on technology perspectives, a clear understanding of the managerial and strategic implications and challenges of big data is still missing in the literature.

The aim of this paper is to summarise the state-of-the-art debate on impact of artificial intelligence on unemployment and reporting up-to-date academic findings.

The paper is designed as a review of the labour vs capital conundrum, the differences between industrial automation and artificial intelligence, threat to employment, the difficulty of substituting, role of soft skills and whether technology leads to the deskilling of human workers or favors increasing human capabilities.

Some authors praise the bright future developments of artificial intelligence while others warn about mass unemployment. Therefore, it is paramount to present an up-to-date overview of the problem, compare and contrast its features with what happened in past innovation waves and contribute to academic discussion about the pros/cons of current trends.

The main value of this paper is presenting a balanced view of 100+ different studies, the vast majority from the last five years. Reading this paper will allow to quickly grasp the main issues around the thorny topic of artificial intelligence and unemployment.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2023-0338

While the theory and practice of open innovation networks are flourishing, green innovation in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is stagnant. This study explores the mechanism driving green innovation in manufacturing SMEs under open innovation networks based on the role of innovation platforms' relational governance.

A quantitative study was conducted using questionnaires to collect data from 270 manufacturing SMEs in Zhejiang Province and employing a structural equation model to test the developed hypotheses.

The results revealed that innovation platforms' relational governance positively affects green innovation in manufacturing SMEs. Furthermore, the collaborative innovation atmosphere and risk perception mediate this relationship through a respective mediating role and a chain-mediating role.

This study is the first to empirically investigate the mechanism of the influence of innovation platforms' relational governance on green innovation in manufacturing SMEs, provide a new perspective for understanding the antecedents of green innovation under open innovation networks, and expand the theoretical research on open innovation management.

The first case of COVID-19 in the Malawi prison system was reported in July 2020. Human rights organisations raised concerns about the possibility of significant COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths in the prison system, because of the poor infrastructure, lack of healthcare and adequate COVID-19 mitigation measures, existing co-morbidities (tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis C), malnutrition and poor health of many prisoners.

The authors conducted a legal-realist assessment of the Malawian prison system response to COVID-19 during state disaster measures, with a specific focus on the right to health and standards of healthcare as mandated in international, African and domestic law.

The Malawi prison system was relatively successful in preventing serious COVID-19 outbreaks in its prisons, despite the lack of resources and the ad hoc reactive approach adopted. Whilst the Malawi national COVID plan was aligned to international and regional protocols, the combination of infrastructural deficits (clinical staff and medical provisions) and poor conditions of detention (congestion, lack of ventilation, hygiene and sanitation) were conducive to poor health and the spread of communicable disease. The state of disaster declared by the Malawi Government and visitation restrictions at prisons worsened prison conditions for those working and living there.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there is limited capacity of prisons to adequately respond to COVID-19. This is the first legal-realist assessment of the Malawian prison system approach to tackling COVID-19, and it contributes to a growing evidence of human rights-based investigations into COVID-19 responses in African prisons (Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe).

The tourism and hospitality sectors are experiencing radical innovation boosted by the advancements in Information and Communication Technologies. Increasingly sophisticated chatbots are introducing novel approaches, re-shaping the dynamics among tourists and service providers, and fostering a remarkable behavioral change in the overall sector. Therefore, the objective of this paper is two-folded: (1) to highlight the academic and industrial standing points with respect to the current chatbots designed/deployed in the tourism sector and (2) to develop a proof-of-concept embodying the most prominent opportunities in the tourism sector.

This work elaborates on the outcomes of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a Focus Group (FG) composed of experts from the tourism industry. Moreover, it presents a proof-of-concept relying on the outcomes obtained from both SLR and FG. Eventually, the proof-of-concept has been tested with experts and practitioners of the tourism sector.

Among the findings elicited by this paper, we can mention the quick evolution of chatbot-based solutions, the need for continuous investments, upskilling, system innovation to tackle the eTourism challenges and the shift toward new dimensions (i.e. tourist-to-tourist-to-chatbot and personalized multi-stakeholder systems). In particular, we focus on the need for chatbot-based activity and thematic aggregation for next-generation tourists and service providers.

Both academic- and industrial-centered findings have been structured and discussed to foster the practitioners' future research. Moreover, the proof-of-concept presented in the paper is the first of its kind, which raised considerable interest from both technical and business-planning perspectives.

This paper examines the relationship between marketing automation emergence and the marketers' use of heuristics in their decision-making processes. Heuristics play a role for the integration of human decision-making models and automation in augmentation processes, particularly in marketing where automation is widespread.

This study analyzes qualitative data about the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics in decision-making models, and it is based on evidence collected from interviews with twenty-two experienced marketers.

Marketers make extensive use of heuristics to manage their tasks. While the adoption of new automatic marketing tools modify the task environment and field of use of traditional decision-making models, the adoption of heuristics rules with a different scope is essential to defining inputs, interpreting/evaluating outputs and control the marketing automation system.

The paper makes a contribution to research on the relationship between marketing automation and decision-making models. In particular, it proposes the results of in-depth interviews with senior decision makers to assess the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics as decision-making models adopted by marketers.

The first prison system case in Zimbabwe was notified in July 2020 shortly after State declaration of disaster. A legal-realist assessment was conducted of the Zimbabwean correctional system response to COVID-19 during state disaster measures, with a focus on assessing right to health, infectious disease mitigation and the extent to which minimum state obligations complied with human and health rights standards.

The Zimbabwean correctional system operations during COVID-19 disaster measures are scrutinized using a range of international, African and domestic human rights instruments in relation to the right to health of prisoners. This study focused particularly on standards of care, environmental conditions of detention and right of access to health care.

Systemic poor standards of detention are observed, where prisoners experience power outages, water shortages and a lack of access to clean drinking water and water for ablution purposes, a severe lack of safe space and adequate ventilation, poor quality food and malnutrition and a lack of sufficient supply of food, medicines, clothing and bedding. Whilst access to health care of prisoners in Zimbabwe has greatly improved in recent times, the standard of care was severely stretched during COVID-19 due to lack of government resourcing and reliance on non-governmental organisation and faith-based organisations to support demand for personal protective equipment, disinfection products and medicines.

Prison conditions in Zimbabwe are conducive to chronic ill health and the spread of many transmissible diseases, not limited to COVID-19. The developed legal-realist account considers whether Zimbabwe had a culture of respect for the rule of law pertinent to human and health rights of those detained during COVID-19 disaster measures, and whether minimum standards of care were upheld.