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This chapter focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic leadership. Interview data from 13 academic leaders (department chairs, deans, vice-rectors) at two Turkish universities are used to voice their experiences. Two main themes emerged from the analysis: the challenges encountered in an era or uncertainty, and the experience of being in between balance and resilience. While all of the leaders interviewed got through the uncertainty produced by the pandemic, and some thrived, it is clear that universities need to do more to prepare themselves and their leaders for future crises.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and none of the world’s think tanks could have predicted how far it would spread. People visualise the pandemic as a classic example of a VUCA environment (an environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). Managing COVID-19 requires unique and different leadership qualities.

Purpose: This study’s rationale emphasises that VUCA demands strategic and agile leadership. Leaders across the globe must acknowledge the fact that the elements of VUCA, i.e. volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, are not synonymous and hence need differential treatment. Also, recommend adopting agile leadership to tackle the VUCA world.

Methodology: This is a conceptual study focusing on agile leadership. The study addresses the challenge of leading in the VUCA environment. The constituting components of VUCA are differentiated, followed by an extensive literature review of agile leadership.

Findings: VUCA is the new normal and is there to stay. Business leaders still need to counter VUCA due to their incapacity to distinguish and treat the components equally. Furthermore, there is an emergent need to develop an agile workforce, agile organisations, and agile leadership to combat VUCA. The study indicates that business leaders must be agile enough to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises. There is a constant need to ensure agility. This study will provide a deep insight into VUCA and help business leaders emerge victorious in turbulent times.

This study examines whether the current virus pandemic (COVID-19) has any significant negative effect on returns series of selected stock markets in the developed, Asian and GCC countries. For this purpose, the EGARCH (1, 1) model and the News Impact Curve (NIC) are applied to examine the persistence of symmetric volatility, leverage-effect and inducing volatility by preceding bad or good news. The findings suggest that the volatility is persistent in all stock markets, but it is under unity for many stock markets, which means the volatility will persist for the short term in most cases. Furthermore, the findings of asymmetric volatility analysis indicate the presence of leverage-effect over the study period in all the selected stock markets except Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong. However, NIC plots provide evidence that the negative shock (news) of the COVID-19 outbreak would put forward a higher volatility on all selected stock market returns in the near future, except for the stock markets in Thailand, Japan and Singapore, where the shocks (positive) suggest a higher subsequent period of conditional variance compared to the current shocks (negative) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, understanding the volatility structure of stock market returns is imperative for policy guidance among the policymakers and potential investors. For policymakers, as the volatility caused by the COVID-19 outbreak is persistent for the short term, this may encourage governments and central banks to implement effective measures to stimulate fiscal and monetary policies to counter the distraction caused by the pandemic, support the economic activities and cushion the local firms from the pandemic effect. For investors, the findings suggest that long-term investment decision should be taken to invest in all stock markets that are negatively affected by the COVID-19 outbreak to achieve capital gain in the future, while short-term investment decisions may be undertaken to take advantage from the short-term market volatility.

The materialization and continuation of the pandemic have a big toll on everyone's life. Female workers specifically from the unorganized sector faced diversified financial crises during the pandemic. These households went through multiple changes in terms of expenditure, loan burden, job uncertainty, etc. A selected sample of 149 has been considered to understand the changes that had taken place in terms of health, expenditure, and other associated evolved behavior in lockdown and post-lockdown phase in a selected rural-based area of West Bengal. By applying different statistical tools like regression, f-test, and t-test, various influencing factors for household expenditure along with the changes in savings behavior have been observed in the chapter. A sudden crisis like COVID-19 has made the selected respondents responsive toward vivid positive lifestyle and attitude changes like financial literacy, savings, crisis management, and so on.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed significant and abrupt lifestyle changes on the pediatric population. Major lifestyle changes that occur during children’s and adolescents’ vital developmental years have the potential to introduce stressors, which have both immediate and long-term effects on physical and mental health. The aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted pediatric mental health included school closures, quarantine, increases in screen time, changes to Labor & Delivery unit COVID-19 policies, and changes to the delivery of clinical mental health care, including telehealth. In addition, pediatric mental health was deeply impacted by the ongoing challenges to health equity associated with health disparities and racism as a health crisis. Pediatric mental health declined since the start of the pandemic, school closures and quarantine affected rates of food insecurity and physical activity levels, and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing health disparities and mental health conditions among the pediatric population. Recommendations for building more resilient public health systems are explored.

Inclusion Europe, the European movement of people with intellectual disabilities and their families, shared what people with intellectual disabilities and their families faced during the COVID-19 crisis. Collecting information showed people with intellectual disabilities were segregated and discriminated against. The pandemic intensified and magnified the segregation and discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities, shedding light on their exclusion. Many human rights were violated. Therefore, such testimonies should encourage governments and institutions to urgently design a society that includes people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

This chapter explains how smart cities can be resilient in pandemic times through small business continuity strategies. A review of definitions of smart cities and urban and business resilience is presented to understand smart cities' resilience. The City Resilience Index is introduced as a tool that cities can use to measure and monitor their resilience in which the economy and social dimension highlight business continuity as a factor in promoting a sustainable economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses, as the engine of smart cities, have made their vulnerability to crises more evident and lack a roadmap or guideline to help them become resilient; for this reason, some business continuity strategies are proposed based on business paper reviews.