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The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the ‘real’ world and substantially impacted the virtual world and thus the Internet ecosystem. It has caused a significant exogenous shock that offers a wealth of natural experiments and produced new data about broadband, clouds, and the Internet in times of crisis. In this chapter, we characterise and evaluate the evolving impact of the global COVID-19 crisis on traffic patterns and loads and the impact of those on Internet performance from multiple perspectives. While we place a particular focus on deriving insights into how we can better respond to crises and better plan for the post-COVID-19 ‘new normal’, we analyse the impact on and the responses by different actors of the Internet ecosystem across different jurisdictions. With a focus on the USA and Europe, we examine the responses of both public and private actors, with the latter including content and cloud providers, content delivery networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs). This chapter makes two contributions: first, we derive lessons learned for a future post-COVID-19 world to inform non-networking spheres and policy-making; second, the insights gained assist the networking community in better planning for the future.

This case study aims to analyse the different factors that cause a decline in an organisation's performance. It projects data for the prospective case readers to explore the possible approaches for the Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to turnaround both the organisations. Furthermore, the case compels the readers to study the Indian Telecom industry to analyse the competitive behaviour and the consequent actions necessary to survive and thrive amongst their peers. From the theoretical perspective, the case emphasises the recent change observed in the Telecom industry regarding the transition from value-chain to value-network.

The authors collected the case facts and data for the case study from secondary sources like the latest news articles, the CRISIL database, company annual statements, company press releases and government regulatory body web portals.

The case study has identified the issues pertinent in the public sector companies in India, especially in the telecom sector, concerning leadership, pending government financial commitments and a slow-moving attitude towards taking action.

The case study highlights the management problems faced by the CMD of the two public sector telecom companies i.e. BSNL and MTNL.

Violence against women and girls is globally prevalent. Overcoming it is a prerequisite for attaining gender equality and achieving sustainable development. The United Nation's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development considers technology as a means to combat violence against women and girls, and there is ample evidence on the positive impact of technology in combating violence. At the same time, however, technology can promote and perpetrate new forms of violence. Research shows that more than 70% of women and girls online are exposed to forms of cyber violence. Most of these cases remain unreported.

This chapter argues that technology contributes to increasing cyber violence against women and girls which in turn leads to severe social and economic implications affecting them. It also argues that legislative and policy reforms can limit this type of violence while enabling women and girls to leverage technology for empowerment. It highlights cases of cyber violence in the Arab region and provides an overview of applicable legislative frameworks. The chapter concludes with recommended policy reforms and measures to strengthen and harmonize efforts to combat cyber violence against women and girls in the Arab region.

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and marketing capability on consumer behavioral responses in the mobile telecommunication industry in Ghana. Particularly, the study estimated the moderating effect of marketing capability on the relationship between CSR and consumer behavioral responses.

Both customers and employees of three major mobile telecommunication companies were sampled for this work. A mixed linear regression technique was used to examine the relationship between corporate responsibility, marketing capability and customer behavioral responses.

The empirical results revealed that marketing capabilities moderate the relationship between CSR and consumer responses in the telecommunication industry.

The study proposes practical dimensions to the mobile telecommunication companies that the extensive development of strong marketing capabilities serves a conduit for CSR to achieve favorable consumer responses.

The results have opened up rather a limitation studies on the moderation role marketing capabilities in relationship between CSR and consumer behavioral responses in the telecommunication industry.

Evidence from previous literature indicates that adopting a new innovative technology has a positive impact on a company’s business performance. Much less work has been carried out into examining whether a technology adoption has impact on corporate reputation. This paper aims to examine the latter topic in a context where social media is the channel used to share news about the introduction of a new technology. The empirical setting of the study consists of five retail companies located in the USA that decided to include Bitcoin as a payment platform.

Twitter data were used to measure how sharing news about the adoption of new technology could affect the reputation of the companies selected, keeping a clear distinction between the volume of data relating to social media responses and the sentiment expressed in the tweets. A panel vector autoregression model was used to incorporate series of data relating to news items, volume and sentiment.

The results show that the news about the adoption of a new technology has a positive impact on both the volume of tech-related tweets and the sentiment expressed in the tweets themselves, although the patterns of these two effects are different. The resulting impact decreases after a few days, both in volume and in sentiment.

The analysis has limitations that future research could address by extending and diversifying the examined companies and the social media used as data sources. The research suggests that managers in medium-sized companies can leverage on the introduction of new technologies that have a direct impact on their customers and gain reputational benefits in terms of immediate visibility.

The research introduces an additional dimension of analysis to the current stream of corporate reputation. Although the literature has already covered the dynamics of response to events on Twitter, by focusing on the adoption of the new Bitcoin technology, the paper provides novel insights.

The Covid-19 pandemic represents an extraordinary and unpredictable event influencing the whole economy and society. Using a case study approach, the authors explored how big companies operating in Italy were able to respond to the crisis to ensure business continuity. Therefore, the authors discussed different business disruptions caused by Covid-19; in addition, they developed an integrated policy framework in which they proposed specific strategic responses for increasing the level of organizational resilience. The aim of the paper is to discuss and reflect on the ability of specific companies to increase their level of organizational resilience when unexpected events happen.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with target CEOs of four major companies operating in Italy in different industries. Especially, the authors focused on multiutilities, media and communications, investment banking and mobile telecommunications. The interviews were based on questions dealing with Covid-19 implications and strategic responses to navigate this complex scenario.

Based on the CEOs' contributions, the authors presented short-term actions and long-term strategies planned and implemented by each Italian company. In particular, the authors emphasized similarities and dissimilarities in terms of strategic responses and future business development.

The analysis of practical cases was helpful for increasing their knowledge on organizational resilience and for providing the managerial community with a policy framework to navigate unexpected events like the Covid-19 pandemic.

This study aims to explain the Indian taxpayers’ harassment saga in the name of revenue collections by the taxmen.

The study gas adopted descriptive viewpoints supported by empirical evidence.

Pursuant to the recent amendments in the Act, a good number of Sections such as 132(1), 132(1 A) and 153 A have empowered the tax officials to conduct raids without explaining the reasons, call for papers for reopening assessments of cases of a decade old and has increased the quantum of penalty for the default period substantially.

The paper is an original one and free from plagiarism.

The growing availability of wireless internet services and the great popularization of smartphones and other mobile devices means a greater challenge for mobile service companies that need to identify the factors influencing the use behavior of mobile services. So considering that the level of consumer involvement can lead to differences in service outcome evaluations, this study aims to examine whether consumer involvement with information and communication technologies (ICTs) has a moderating influence on consumer behavior in mobile services

The authors propose an integrative model of the usage of mobile services to examine the moderating role of involvement with ICTs. Drawing on a sample of 493 users, two levels of involvement with ICTs were examined; and data were analyzed through multiple-group structural equation modeling.

Findings show that the level of consumer involvement with ICTs influences the behavior in the mobile services. Further, the findings support that mobile services’ perceived quality, followed by the service perceived value are the factors with a stronger influence in satisfaction with mobile services, regardless the level of consumer involvement with ICTs. However, the mobile company corporate image has a lower influence. In addition, the results support the partial moderating role of involvement with ICTs in the loyalty toward mobile service providers, suggesting that consumers lowly involved with ICTs experience a greater impact of the service quality on their loyalty.

The main contribution of this study is the examination of the influence of involvement with technologies in consumer behavior in the mobile services

La disponibilidad creciente de los servicios internet inalámbrico y la gran popularización y adopción de los smartphones y de otros dispositivos móviles supone un gran desafío para las compañías de servicios móviles que necesitan identificar aquellos factores que influyen en el comportamiento de uso de los servicios móviles. Así, considerando que el nivel de implicación del consumidor puede llevar a diferencias en las evaluaciones de los resultados de los servicios, este estudio analiza si la implicación del consumidor con las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TICs) tiene una influencia moderadora en el comportamiento del consumidor en los servicios móviles.

Se propone un modelo integrador sobre el uso de los servicios móviles para examinar el rol moderador de la implicación del consumidor con las TICs. Sobre la base de una muestra de 493 usuarios, se analizaron dos niveles de implicación con las TICs; y los datos fueron analizados mediante un modelo multigrupo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Los resultados muestran que el nivel de implicación del consumidor con las TIC influye en su comportamiento hacia los servicios móviles. Además, nuestros resultados respaldan que la calidad percibida de los servicios móviles, seguida del valor percibido de estos servicios son los factores con mayor influencia en la satisfacción con los servicios móviles, independientemente del nivel de implicación del consumidor con las TIC. Sin embargo, la imagen corporativa de la compañía de servicios móviles tiene una influencia menor. Adicionalmente, nuestros resultados muestran el rol moderador parcial de la implicación con las TIC en la lealtad hacia los proveedores de servicios móviles, sugiriendo que los consumidores poco implicados con las TIC experimentan un mayor impacto de la calidad del servicio en su lealtad.

La principal contribución de este estudio es el análisis de la influencia de la implicación del consumidor con las tecnologías, en su comportamiento hacia los servicios de comunicación móvil.

Effective customer journey design (ECJD) is considered a key variable in customer experience management and an essential source of brand meaning and pro-brand behavior. Although previous research has confirmed its importance for driving brand attitudes and loyalty, the role of consumer-brand identification as a social identity-based influence in this relationship has not yet been discussed. Drawing on construal level and social identity theories, this paper aims to investigate whether effective journeys and the resulting overall journey experience are equally powerful in driving brand loyalty among customers with different levels of consumer-brand identification.

The present article develops and tests a research model using data from the European and US service sectors (N = 1,454) to investigate how and when ECJD affects service brand loyalty.

Across two cultural contexts, four service industries and 33 service brands, the results reveal that ECJD is a crucial driver of service brand loyalty for customers with low consumer-brand identification. Moreover, the findings show that different aspects of journey effectiveness positively impact the valence of customers’ experience related to those journeys – a process that is ultimately decisive for their brand loyalty.

This study is unique because it generates theoretical and practical knowledge by combining the literature streams of customer journey design, customer experience and branding. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that consumer-brand identification is a critical boundary condition to be considered in the relationship between ECJD and brand loyalty in services.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.