Openness and Entrepreneurial Performance During COVID-19 Pandemic: Strategic Decision Comprehensiveness as an Inconsistent Mediator

The COVID-19 pandemic severely hit small and micro-businesses. In the face of the impact of the pandemic, how to help entrepreneurs, especially small- and micro-businesses that are more sensitive to the impact of the pandemic, make decisions to reduce losses has become an issue worth paying attention to. From the perspective of personality approach, this article studied openness, which is the strongest predictor of entrepreneurial performance among the big five personality traits, and explored the impact of entrepreneurs’ openness on entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the inconsistent mediating role of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among 238 entrepreneurs of small- and micro-businesses when China was recovering from the pandemic and starting to resume work and production (February 18 – February 26, 2020). Entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was measured by comparing the business conditions before and after the pandemic. The results showed that entrepreneurs’ openness positively impacted strategic decision comprehensiveness and entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the two competing hypotheses proposed by summarizing previous research, the results supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness negatively affected entrepreneurial performance. It indicated that entrepreneurs who tend to collect and analyze information extensively and then make decisions during the pandemic could not seize opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial performance. The results further supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness was an inconsistent mediator between openness and entrepreneurial performance, showing that entrepreneurs with low openness can also reduce the loss of entrepreneurial performance during the pandemic by making incomplete but rapid strategic decisions. This study found that the openness of entrepreneurs had a positive impact on strategic decision comprehensiveness for the first time and provided more empirical evidence for the negative effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance in the context of information uncertainty and unanalyzable situations. The inconsistent mediating effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness revealed in this study also has practical significance for helping entrepreneurs make correct decisions to reduce the losses caused by the pandemic.

Informational uncertainty of measuring instruments

Recently, there has been a revival of interest in the use of the information approach in the theory of measurements. Unlike the traditional approach, information theory does not evaluate error or uncertainty, but entropy and the amount of information. This article analyzes a number of recent publications that develop ideas for the information approach. The limitations and disadvantages of both the entropy approach and the concept of uncertainty are indicated. As a compromise solution, it is proposed to use a criterion based on the Bongard’s uncertainty and useful information. The concept of information uncertainty is proposed, which is estimated by the amount of negative useful information, that is, misinformation introduced by the measuring instrument. Some methods for calculating information uncertainty are described. The problems of using the uncertainty approach are noted. This approach does not imply the use of such a generalized characteristic of measuring instruments as an accuracy class. The article proposes an analogue of the accuracy class in the form of relative informational uncertainty, expressed as a percentage. This will make it possible to evaluate the quality of the measuring instrument by a single parameter, the calculation of which requires a minimum of computational operations.

This Is the Way the World Ends, Not With a Bang but Bonds and Bullets

This article explores instinctive frames of human decision-making in environmental and resource economics. Higher-moment asset pricing combines rational, mathematically informed economic reasoning with psychological and biological insights. Leptokurtic blindness and skewness preference combine in particularly challenging ways for carbon mitigation. At their worst, human heuristics may generate perverse decisions. Information uncertainty and the innate preference for bonds-and-bullets portfolios may impair responses to catastrophic climate change.

A Robust Mechanism for Categorizing Context-Aware Applications into Generations

The hunt to categorize context-aware applications has been a prevalent issue to developers of context-aware applications. The previous categorizations were based on the functions of the applications. These mechanisms yielded limited results since many applications could not be categorized. This paper categorizes applications into four generations based on developmental trends through a literature survey. The first generation applications focused on data acquisition and used hardware sensors. The second generation applications focused on knowledge acquisition and used software sensors, semantic language and ontology-based modelling languages. The third generation applications focused on intelligent reasoning and used mechanisms to handle information uncertainty. The fourth generation applications deprecate cumbersome ruleset implementations and focus on artificial intelligence whilst taking into consideration the effect of the dynamics of users’ background and preference on contextual information. The study demonstrated that when applications, methods or technologies can be categorized over some time, it is better to classify them into generations.

THE VUCA ERA CREATES COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN INDONESIA BEING COMPLICATED

This article aims to analyze the confusion of information, uncertainty in the situation, and human puzzlement have overshadowed the actions of Indonesian citizens throughout 2020 until the end of January 2021 in line with the pandemic outbreak which have not yet ended and still cannot be predicted when it will end. Volatility, uncertainty, problems of complexity and ambiguity of the choices are conditions that have been described by the VUCA concept. Covid-19, which has infected more than one million people in the country, has caused a lot of excitement in various domains: economic, political, social, cultural, and various other aspects of life. By conducting a literature review from March 2020 to January 2021 and analyzing secondary data from Twitter and distributing short questionnaires through Google Form on August 2020, as 969 respondents in Java, Bali, Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara dan Papua Islands the authors found that the VUCA era facilitates various complexities in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. The clumsy policies create uncertainty way in the process of social transformation towards society who cares about health protocols. Some of the solutions offered by Bennet and Lemoine (2014) or Aura Codreanu (2016) are still insufficient to manage the changes that occur towards a better life. This article contributes ideas related to social action about new social care, togetherness, and responsibility for realizing a new normal life.

Hypothesis on the informative principles of voluntary and involuntary attention: on the theory of non-systems and causal environments in causal dualism

The subject of this research is certain informative principles of functionality of human nervous system. In the limelight is the interdependence of consciousness and information, as well as the question in the spirit of anti-physicalist arguments: whether the conscious processes are informative, and thus physical, or require a categorical apparatus for description? The first part of the article discusses possible wording of some informative principles of functionality of nervous system that answer the question “why” rather than “how”. The second part is dedicated to the general classification of causal environments, as well as description of conscious processes within the framework of new possible terminology. A number of hypotheses is advanced on the informative mechanisms of involuntary and voluntary attention. With regards to involuntary attention, the author examines the mechanism for resource conservation, or filtering information, which suggests that the nervous system tends to consume resources for processing the rarer – and more information capacious messages. Such position complies with the law of conservation of energy. Voluntary attention is viewed on the basis of information interpretation of the Le Chatelier’s principle. Voluntary attention, resulting conscious actions, and responses of the nervous system (including creativity) are considered as informational messages aimed at alleviation of the impact of external environment, namely the level of information uncertainty. Such information approach prompts to view consciousness as a non-system or causal environment, within which causality is transmitted without transmitting information. The article provides the variant of classification of causal environments that may contribute to further development of non-informative (non-physicalist) approach towards the problem of consciousness.

Blockchain-Based Traceability for Anti-Counterfeit in Cross-Border E-Commerce Transactions

Cross-border e-commerce, involving international product transactions via online and mobile platforms, is growing at a dramatic rate around the globe. One of the main concerns of brand firms is preventing counterfeit products from being sold under their names on e-commerce platforms. Counterfeit goods not only create economic losses to both the supply and demand sides, but also undermine efforts to improve sustainability. Proliferating counterfeits harm the brands of supply firms and trust in selling e-commerce platforms. In addition, they discourage participants in the supply chain from investing in social and environmental sustainability. If end-customers have access to detailed and comprehensive product information with a traceability system that can help overcome information uncertainty and asymmetry, losses can be prevented. The result of the pilot test has shown that securely shared in-depth product information among supply chain stakeholders from the supply side to end-customers can help prevent counterfeit goods from proliferating further by enabling consumers to determine the authenticity of products and report forgeries before paying.

Beyond the Front-Line: the Coping Strategies and Discretion of Lithuanian Street-Level Bureaucracy During COVID-19

This article presents the results of a project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania: ‘Public policy solutions and their improvement to overcome the COVID-19 crisis in Lithuanian municipalities: solution tools and service delivery.’ The research methodology is based on street-level bureaucracy theory and ongoing qualitative research in the form of interviews with social workers and doctors. Interviews were conducted in the Lithuanian municipalities which became the first COVID-19 hotspots in March-April 2020. The aim is to identify the response and coping strategies of street-level bureaucracy. The findings of current research suggest that the workload of street-level bureaucrats increased, the situation changed very rapidly, and there was a constant need to adopt rules and even recommendations issued by the ministry. Fear of COVID-19 infection, a lack of accurate information, uncertainty, and the possibility of allowing staff with children to leave the workplace led to staff shortages. This in turn motivated the administration and the remaining employees to look for suitable coping strategies.