Editorial: Managing under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic

Citation

Mishra, A.S. (2022), "Editorial: Managing under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic", IIM Ranchi Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 105-107. https://doi.org/10.1108/IRJMS-07-2022-182

COVID-19 engulfed the whole world with serious ramifications for people, the economy and society. Studies have reported a negative influence on mental health, work attitudes, employee motivation and productivity. Multiple agencies were involved in estimating the scale of the problem and ways to overcome the same. A study examining the impact of COVID-19 on firm performance based on the data of 371 firms, including construction, tourism, hospitality, food and consumer sector firms, reported that the tourism, hospitality and consumer sectors were most adversely affected by COVID-19 while construction and food industry were relatively less affected by the pandemic (Alsamhi, Al-Ofairi, Farhan, Al-ahdal, & Siddiqui, 2022). However, we quickly learnt many things, and there have been positive developments too. With this backdrop, I present the second issue of IRJMS on behalf of the entire editorial board and advisory board.

IRJMS was born during the pandemic times, and the four papers out of the seven selected for the second issue of its first volume mentioned COVID-19 pandemic as a keyword in their title. Thus, the editorial gets its title, “Managing under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic”. During pandemic times, technology has played a very vital role in overcoming our difficulties. The frequency and duration of online engagement of people have drastically increased. The first paper by Sumi and Ahmed (2022) has focused on this very behaviour, i.e., the online buying behaviour of young consumers from Bangladesh under the theoretical framework of the technology acceptance and consumer value theory during the COVID-19 pandemic. A conceptual model is used consisting of online buying behaviour as a dependent variable and attitude as a mediating variable while a set of seven variables, namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, convenience, wider selection, price and health aspects representing hedonic and utilitarian motivational values as independent variables. While using the survey method and structural equation modelling, authors have concluded that perceived enjoyment, price, convenience and health aspects positively influenced online buying attitudes, which in turn positively affected online buying behaviour.

The next paper again belongs to the consumer behaviour domain wherein Arachchi (2022) explores the role of perceived corporate citizenship on purchase intentions among consumers of Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 pandemic through a survey-based study. The scholar has invoked multiple theoretical frameworks like social exchange theory, brand relationship theory and social cognitive theory. Readers may find several interesting findings regarding how to influence purchase intentions.

Nurses are the frontline healthcare professionals who toiled a lot to take care of huge traffic of indoor and outdoor patients during the pandemic times. The third paper by Dasgupta (2022) examined how organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) of such nurses is influenced by team support and emotional exhaustion. Further, the mediating role of team commitment has been explored between OCB and other constructs like team support and the emotional exhaustion relationship. The scholar suggests that team commitment has emerged as a significant factor which neutralises the negative impact of emotional exhaustion. Team member exchange is a novel factor in the study.

One of the major consequences of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic was work from home. The fourth paper by Soman and Mohanan (2022) depicted the work and home domains and resultant stress among working women from both constructivist and positivist frameworks. Using convergent parallel design, researchers have conducted a small sample survey of 53 respondents and 10 qualitative interviews. Although the dataset is small, findings provide meaningful insight regarding distribution patterns and stress levels among working women of Kerala. Whether these findings were different before pandemic times or may vary according to professional groupings and education levels of women are further questions to be examined. Mixed methods may be considered a strength of the study.

Frontline service employees are the face of organizations for customers. Engaged frontline employees may make or mar the fortunes of organizations depending on how they behave with customers. Personality may cause behaviour. The proactive personality of frontline employees may influence their behaviour positively towards customers. The fifth paper by Zahoor and Khan (2022) explored the dynamics of customer engagement with a conceptual model representing multi-stage mediation suggesting that the proactive personality and recovery performance relationship is mediated by the work engagement of frontline employees. Further, customer engagement and work engagement of frontline employees’ relationship is mediated by the perceived recovery performance of frontline employees. In addition to this, a proactive personality is directly related to customer engagement. With the help of three data sources, customer, frontline employees and colleagues of frontline employees, researchers have concluded that the proactive personality of frontline employees influence customer engagement. This relationship is further reinforced by sequential mediation of work engagement and service recovery performance.

India is targeting to become a five trillion economy by 2024. Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education will play a pivotal role in realising this target. The sixth paper by Maharana and Chaudhury (2022) has picked up this theme and made a comparative study of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship intent among the private and government university students from Odisha. Using survey-based data, researchers have concluded that the quality of entrepreneurship education (QEE), students’ exposure to entrepreneurship education (EEE) and entrepreneurial intent (EI) are relatively better among private universities as compared to government universities. They also observed that the students belonging to the commerce and management stream reported relatively higher EI compared to the students of other streams. Extracurricular activities and EEE significantly contribute to EI. Men displayed relatively higher EI as compared to women while socio-economic status did not significantly contribute to EI. The study has provided practical insights into designing entrepreneurship education programmes.

During COVID-19-induced lockdown, teaching has progressively turned into an online activity, and this change in workspace has changed the work methods and processes for employees among higher educational institutions such that some employees work from home while others have adopted a rotation system where they receive minimum supervision at work. In this context, the paper by Koomson (2022) evaluates the effect of employee’s perceived organisational support on student loyalty and further exploring the indirect influence of total quality management, and information communication technology adoption. The paper had also examined the moderating roles of government support and co-worker support.

The seven papers presented in the issue represent diverse multidisciplinary streams of management. Hope the readers and potential authors will find the same interesting and stimulating for further research. I thank the esteemed reviewers for their valuable contributions to shaping IRJMS. I look forward to your feedback for further enhancement of this journal.