Implementing strategic responses in the COVID-19 market crisis: a study of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented challenges for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies. This paper aims to examine how India's SMEs implement their strategic responses in this crisis. Design/methodology/approach The study uses dynamic capability theory to explore the strategic responses of SMEs. Strategy implementation theory helps to explain how they implement innovative practices for outcomes. A research model defines the COVID-19 challenges, strategic responses and performance outcomes. The study reports the findings of an initial pilot study of 75 firms and follow-up case study results in the context of COVID-19. Findings Firms choose their approaches according to their perceived market risks. Case studies illustrate that firms display diverse attitudes depending on their strategic direction, leadership vision and organizational culture. They achieve different outcomes by implementing specific styles of risk management practices (e.g. risk-averting, risk-taking and risk-thriving). Research limitations/implications Although the study context is Indian SMEs, the findings suggest meaningful lessons for other emerging economies in similar crisis events. The propositions may be extended to future research in broad contexts. Practical implications Even in the extraordinary COVID-19 market crisis, SMEs with limited resources display their strategic potential by recognizing their unique capabilities, translating them into effective actions and achieving desirable outcomes. Social implications In the COVID-19 pandemic, top leaders' mental attitude, strategic perspective and routine practices are contagious. Positive leadership motivates both internal and external stakeholders with an enormous level of collaboration. Originality/value This rare study of Indian SMEs provides a theoretical framework for designing a pilot survey and conducting a case study of multiple firms. Based on these findings, testable propositions are articulated for future research in diverse organizational and national contexts.

The role of green HRM in driving hotels' green creativity

Purpose Employee green behavior can lead to a firm's green performance. However, green management research has not accorded adequate attention to the mechanism underlying green creativity. This study aims to investigate the influence of green human resource management (GHRM) practices on green creativity at both individual and collective levels. Design/methodology/approach Through a multisource, multiwave survey data obtained from employees of 3- to 5-star hotels in Kenya, the present study investigates how GHRM practices influence individual and collective green creativity. For the data analysis, we employed multilevel structural equation modeling using MPlus 7.2. Findings The study findings show that GHRM practices influence individual and collective green creativity. The proposed mediating role of the enablers of green culture (EGC) in these relationships was confirmed. Moreover, environmentally specific servant leadership moderated the relationships between GHRM and individual and collective green creativity. Research limitations/implications The study recommends that hotel management should embrace GHRM practices to nurture green creativity at the employee and team levels. The hotels management is further persuaded by the findings of this study to pay attention to the four EGC (leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement and employee empowerment) which play a key role in enhancing green creativity among hotel employees. Practical implications The study recommends that hotel management should embrace GHRM practices to nurture green creativity at the employee and team levels. The hotels' management is further persuaded by the findings of this study to pay attention to the four EGC (leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement and employee empowerment) which play a key role in enhancing green creativity among hotel employees. Originality/value We develop and propose an integrated conceptual framework by which hotels can deploy to nurture green creativity at individual and team levels. We anticipate that our study findings will elicit further research into the mechanisms that reveal the nexus between GHRM and other employee green performance outcomes in the hotel sector.

Development of common leaf-footed bug pests depends on the presence and identity of their environmentally-acquired symbionts

Many beneficial symbioses between bacteria and their terrestrial arthropod hosts are vertically transmitted from mother to offspring, ensuring the progeny acquire necessary partners. Unusually, in several families of coreoid and lygeoid bugs (Hemiptera), nymphs must instead ingest the beneficial symbiont, Burkholderia ( sensu lato ), from the environment early in development. We studied the effects of Burkholderia on development of two species of leaf-footed bug (Coreidae) in the genus Leptoglossus, L. zonatus and L. phyllopus. We found no evidence for vertical transmission of the symbiont, but found stark differences in performance between symbiotic and aposymbiotic individuals. Symbiotic nymphs grew more rapidly, were approximately four times more likely to survive to adulthood than aposymbiotic bugs, and were two times larger. These findings suggest that Burkholderia is an obligate symbiont for Leptoglossus species. We also tested for variation in fitness effects conferred by four symbiont isolates representing different species within Burkholderia ’s insect-associated Stinkbug Beneficial and Environmental (SBE) clade. While three isolates conferred similar benefits to hosts, nymphs associated with the fourth isolate grew more slowly and weighed significantly less as adults. The effects of the four isolates were similar for both Leptoglossus species. This work indicates that both Burkholderia acquisition and isolate identity play critical roles in the growth and development of Leptoglossus. Importance Leptoglossus zonatus and L. phyllopus are important polyphagous pests and both species have been well-studied, but generally without regard to their dependance on a bacterial symbiont. Our results indicate that the central role of Burkholderia in the biology of these insects, as well as in other leaf-footed bugs, should be considered in future studies of coreid life history, ecology and pest management. Our work suggests acquisition of Burkholderia is critical for the growth and development of Leptoglossus species. Further, we found that there was variation in performance outcomes according to symbiont identity, even among members of the Stinkbug Beneficial and Environmental clade. This suggests that although environmental acquisition of a symbiont can provide extraordinary flexibility in partner associations, it also carries a risk if the partner is sub-optimal.

ГНОСЕОЛОГІЧНА СУТНІСТЬ СТАНОВЛЕННЯ ТА ФОРМУВАННЯ СОЦІАЛЬНОЇ ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНОСТІ ЗАКЛАДІВ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ В УМОВАХ СТРУКТУРНО-ІННОВАЦІЙНИХ ПЕРЕТВОРЕНЬ

The article provides insights into the nature and specifics of social responsibility of higher education institutions in the context of transformational economy. In particular, it is argued that in the frameworks of structural and innovative transformations, technogenic safety as a readiness to be socially responsible, contributes to implementing the idea of integration of philosophical, legal, sociological and pedagogical approaches to enhance the performance of modern higher education institutions. The most critical factors in building social responsibility are the focus on professional responsibility, autonomy of higher education institutions, as well as the compliance with the principle of freedom of choice and responsibility in providing dual education services and applied research. The hypothesis of the study is the statement that in the context of structural and innovative transformations, the gnoseological nature of social responsibility of higher education institutions is embodied in gradual building of a technogenic safety paradigm. The research objective is to explore the specifics of social responsibility of higher education institutions from the perspectives of structural and innovative transformations. To attain the study agenda, the following research methods have been employed: historical analysis – to track successive changes in social responsibility concepts in the area of higher education subject to evolutionary development of society; analysis and synthesis techniques – to reveal the content and structure of a social responsibility framework. The findings demonstrate that a technological background to facilitate successive change in the structure of social responsibility elements is the following chain relationship: goals – knowledge – methods – activities. In this chain, goals are considered as expected professional performance outcomes; knowledge, methods and activities – as the capacity (readiness) of higher education institutions to implement effective professional technologies to attain the best results along with meeting all stakeholders’ demands. The summary concludes that the gnoseological implications in building social responsibility in higher education institutions affect the content of goals and the qualitative variety of tools which rely upon worldview and cultural societal values, as well as moral principles and ethical standards of educational activities.

Prenatal prediction of neonatal respiratory morbidity: a radiomics method based on imbalanced few-shot fetal lung ultrasound images

Background To develop a non-invasive method for the prenatal prediction of neonatal respiratory morbidity (NRM) by a novel radiomics method based on imbalanced few-shot fetal lung ultrasound images. Methods A total of 210 fetal lung ultrasound images were enrolled in this study, including 159 normal newborns and 51 NRM newborns. Fetal lungs were delineated as the region of interest (ROI), where radiomics features were designed and extracted. Integrating radiomics features selected and two clinical features, including gestational age and gestational diabetes mellitus, the prediction model was developed and evaluated. The modelling methods used were data augmentation, cost-sensitive learning, and ensemble learning. Furthermore, two methods, which embed data balancing into ensemble learning, were employed to address the problems of imbalance and few-shot simultaneously. Results Our model achieved sensitivity values of 0.82, specificity values of 0.84, balanced accuracy values of 0.83 and area under the curve values of 0.87 in the test set. The radiomics features extracted from the ROIs at different locations within the lung region achieved similar classification performance outcomes. Conclusion The feature set we designed can efficiently and robustly describe fetal lungs for NRM prediction. RUSBoost shows excellent performance compared to state-of-the-art classifiers on the imbalanced few-shot dataset. The diagnostic efficacy of the model we developed is similar to that of several previous reports of amniocentesis and can serve as a non-invasive, precise evaluation tool for NRM prediction.

An Automated Geometric Appraisal Model

The idea of the circular economy is gaining steam in academia through the green economics of human resources policies in Asia. A high performance model delivers superior outcomes but does not deter praiseworthy professors from biased human interference. Using the computerized-based geometric performance base incentive model (CGPBI) is particularly beneficial in encouraging faculty who have achieved superior outcomes in all areas of science, academia, and other contributions. To fill this gap, the author proposed a geometric hybrid reward policy model that includes a number of fictitious variables such as topic tolerance, the effects of subject matter, and the average outcome across all subjects. This model uses Python to construct a standardized framework to gather data on the success of faculty. It provides a robust indication of comparative success and motivates workers to achieve more transparent performance outcomes. The author proposes the use of a multi-source assessment (MSA) to evaluate the faculty's annual results.