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Introduction: The pandemic era has given rise to emerging VUCA factors, characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Navigating the impact of these challenges is essential for adapting and thriving in a post-pandemic world; therefore, it is important to identify VUCA factors.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify and analyse the VUCA factors that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on sectors such as hospitality, tourism, education, construction, manufacturing, Information Technology, healthcare, and automobiles.

Need for the Study: Analysing emerging VUCA factors is crucial for businesses to prepare for unforeseen events. While VUCA factors were previously studied during significant events like the Greater Recession, BREXIT, and demonetisation, the pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges, making the identification of emerging VUCA components crucial.

Methodology: The methodology involves reviewing articles and research papers to understand the pandemic’s impact on various sectors. The findings provide insights into prominent VUCA factors and their implications for businesses, contributing to existing knowledge.

Findings: This research uncovers the challenges organisations encountered in the pandemic’s VUCA environment, offering insights into uncertainties and strategies for survival. It highlights the importance of adaptability, resilience, and innovation in overcoming VUCA’s negative impacts and establishing a new business paradigm.

Practical Implications: This chapter is essential in providing valuable insights for organisations, policymakers, and businesses on crisis preparedness, emphasising the significance of agility, robust contingency planning, and sector-specific considerations. Reviewing operations and implementing backup plans, businesses can develop effective strategies for long-term resilience and success in the face of unforeseen disruptions.

Racism occurs in many ways and varies across countries, evolving and adapting to sociocultural history, as well as contemporary economic, political and technological changes. This chapter discusses the multilevel dimensions of racism and its diverse manifestations across multiracial societies. It examines how different aspects of racism are mediated interpersonally, and embedded in institutions, social structures and processes, that produce and sustain racial inequities in power, resources and lived experiences. Furthermore, this chapter explores the direct and indirect ways racism is expressed in online and offline platforms and details its impacts on various groups based on their intersecting social and cultural identities. Targets of racism are those who primarily bear the adverse effects. However, racism also affects its perpetrators in many ways, including by limiting their social relations and attachments, and by imposing social and economic costs. This chapter thus analyses the many aspects of racism both from targets and perpetrators' perspectives.

This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings. The authors rely on “strange accounting” to consider their experiences in the academy from various standpoints: before and after promotion, before and after leaving academia. While reflecting on our past experiences, we introduce the concept of “everyday precariousness” as a way of explaining the normalization of instability, insecurity, and negative affect that is part of everyday life for those with devalued statuses in academic settings and beyond. Everyday precariousness is an embodied experience for those in vulnerable positions. Normalized exposure to risks, such as discrimination, harassment, bullying, or structural instability, produces an undercurrent of threat that permeates academic culture. Our stories of everyday precariousness span race, ethnicity, class, academic roles, and gender boundaries (among many others). Analyzing these experiences furthers previous work on the uses of strange accounting as well as the dynamics of status silencing. In the final analysis, unresisted and unabated, everyday precariousness and status silencing can lead to institutional failure and resonance disasters.