Search results

This scoping review article examined research on information behavior in communities over the past two decades (2000–2023). The review aims to uncover the characteristics and types of communities studied, the featured information behaviors, and the research methods employed.

The PRISMA-ScR guidelines were followed to conduct this review. Five databases were selected to search for relevant empirical research. A total of 57 studies met the inclusion criteria for review. Thematic synthesis was used to analyze the multidimensional findings of included studies.

A steady increase in the number of articles is evident in the past two decades. The review suggests that information behavior in community studies involved collaboration from other disciplines, such as public health and business management. More than half of the communities studied are virtual communities (56.1%), followed by communities of identity, professional communities and support communities, communities of interest, geographic communities, and academic communities. There are overlaps among these categories. Information sharing (63.2%) and information seeking (57.9%) were the most studied behavior of communities, followed by information use, information needs, and information judgment. Questionnaires (38.6%) and interviews (35.1%) were the most commonly used data collection techniques in studying information behavior in communities. It is noteworthy that eleven (19.3%) mentioned utilizing community-engaged approaches.

This is the first scoping review to explore the intersecting constructs of community research and information behavior studies. We call for further research to understand the contextual factors that shape the community’s information environments and to increase awareness of the partnership between communities and researchers.

This research paper examines the complex interplay of trust, corruption, and governance during the COVID-19 pandemic, analysing how these sociopolitical factors influence public health outcomes. Utilising the Generalised Additive Model (GAM) for Corruption Risk and Trust, the study provides a fresh perspective on the pandemic’s multifaceted impact, extending beyond traditional biomedical approaches. Through an in-depth analysis of global data, the paper unveils the intricate links between public confidence in government and the perceived integrity of political systems, highlighting how these elements affect the pandemic’s fatality rates. It also sheds light on the role of misinformation and politicisation in moulding public perceptions and responses to the crisis. This work offers a crucial viewpoint for understanding the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19, emphasising the critical need for transparent and reliable governance in managing public health emergencies. The findings underscore the significant influence of governance quality, societal trust, and corruption on health crises. Contributing to the broader discussion on the interaction between political, social, and health factors during emergencies, this study has important implications for policymakers, health professionals, and the international community.

The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) has engaged in learning and applying trauma-informed concepts since 2020. These efforts followed conversations about how to compassionately uphold the libraries' Code of Conduct (CoC). Conversations occurred against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a national racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and a series of local incidents including border control, racial aggression, insecure access to basic needs and mental health services, and the recent on-campus homicide of a faculty member. In response, the library's Diversity, Social Justice, and Equity Council (DSJEC) began working to identify resources for trauma-informed services and leadership. UAL has interrogated the ways in which the CoC serves both as a response to expressions of trauma and a potential perpetuating source of trauma for patrons and staff. Moreover, many staff members have experienced trauma that occurred either within or outside the workplace that affects their work experience. UAL contracted with relational healing and life coach Nisha Mody to deliver a series of webinars introducing trauma-informed concepts and connecting them to academic library work.

A result of trauma-informed training was a deeper knowledge of trauma-informed principles and their connection to systemic inequity and power. For this reason, UAL and other academic libraries may encounter challenges when applying trauma-informed practices within the administrative and cultural context of higher education.

Facilitated by social media, employee activism is on the rise, often in response to organizations' own socially irresponsible behavior. Given that digital employee activism is a vital yet underexplored research arena, the purpose of this study is to propose and test a theoretical model for understanding this phenomenon.

A survey was launched on Dynata, a US-based consumer panel company. A total of 657 representative full-time employees working at different levels of positions participated the survey to indicate their perceptual and behavioral responses to organizational social irresponsibility.

Moral obligation was a significant factor in mediating the relationship between organizational social irresponsibility and digital employee activism. Ideological psychological contract adds supplemental weights moderating the mediation effect on digital employee activism.

This study, based on social regulation theory, explores the rise of employee activism in response to organizations’ socially irresponsible behavior. The study identifies moral obligation and ideological psychological contract as the driving forces behind digital employee activism. This study advances digital employee activism scholarship by incorporating the normative lens of moral obligation and ideological psychological contract.

This paper investigates the impact of public support on Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth’ metrics in the post-COVID-19 era, focusing on subsidies, guarantee schemes and incubation services, among other firm characteristics and financing choices.

The paper employed a quantitative approach, gathering data through a survey administered to 109 SME managers and chief financial officers (CFOs) in the Casablanca-Settat region. The survey was designed to capture a comprehensive range of variables related to firm characteristics, financing sources, and growth indicators. To streamline and reduce the complexity of the dataset, principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized, allowing for the identification of key underlying factors. Following this dimensionality reduction, several ordinal probit regression models, including a stepwise approach, were applied to examine the relationship between the identified factors and the growth metrics of the SMEs. This multi-model strategy enabled the identification of the most significant determinants across various growth metrics, ensuring a robust and nuanced analysis of SME growth.

Our findings paint a complex picture: subsidies play a positive role in boosting sales and added value but don’t strongly impact job growth. Guarantee schemes help SMEs grow their workforce and sales but have a smaller effect on net income and added value. Incubation programs show limited impact overall, hinting at a need for stronger ongoing support. Financing options offer only modest growth benefits, while factors like family involvement and effective human resource practices stand out as key growth drivers. Innovation contributes gradually, underscoring the importance of a steady, long-term approach to supporting SMEs.

It is crucial to acknowledge that this analysis is conducted within the post-COVID-19 context, a period marked by significant instability, uncertainty and a lack of visibility for firms and economies worldwide. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized. Another limitation of our work is its geographic focus, which is confined to the region of Casablanca-Settat. This regional limitation may restrict the generalizability of our findings to other areas within Morocco or to different countries with varying economic environments and policy frameworks.

The findings of this study suggest actionable steps for policymakers and public actors aiming to enhance SME growth. Tailoring credit guarantee schemes to the specific needs of SMEs across various sizes and sectors can improve financial accessibility, while fostering stronger collaboration between public entities and financial institutions ensures consistent and responsive credit flows. Additionally, strengthening incubation programs with strategic financial guidance and capacity-building initiatives can empower SMEs to build sustainable financial foundations.

This research provides valuable guidance for policymakers and managers aiming to reinforce the resilience and stimulate the growth of Moroccan SMEs in a dynamic economic environment. Also, it's the first of its kind to our knowledge in the context of a developing country.

Disaster research is often geared towards logocentrism and has relatively few outputs that explore alternative forms of representation, particularly those using an artistic medium. This paper explores how the creative use of audio representation can enhance understanding of flooding experiences, challenging the predominant text-based approach within qualitative study.

During a series of visits to people who had been flooded in 2019 in the UK, interviews and ambient sounds were recorded, analysed and then intertwined with musical elements composed by the lead author. The result is a phonographic representation of the synthesised data. The process explores a tripartite, creative, sonic approach that comingles thematic spoken excerpts with local sounds and musical compositions.

This article presents three sonic vignettes that illustrate the use of audio as a medium for academic research outputs. It contributes to the current consensus that the interpretation, representation and dissemination of research findings should be broadened beyond the dominance of the written word to align with the ethos of the Disaster Studies Manifesto.

The research contributes to disaster scholarship by developing a transdisciplinary approach to explore people’s experiences. By retaining the participants’ voices at its core, it makes use of in-depth, rich data to illustrate individuality, rather than aiming to generalise.

Very little disaster research has focussed on pushing the boundaries of investigation by using the arts as a lens for both the researcher and their audience. Such work may connect with a wider range of people compared to a text-based “traditional” academic output. It can offer new opportunities for practical uses within Disaster Risk Reduction, for example as a communicative and educational tool.

This paper contributes to understanding the impact of developing audio representation as a medium for conveying people’s experiences of flooded homes.

Although situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is centered on rationality and cognitive information processing, it ignores that people are also driven by irrationality and non-cognitive information processing. The purpose of this study aims to fill this gap by examining how gender stereotypes, based on perceived spokesperson sex influence the public’s perceptions of crisis response messages.

A 2 (industry type: automotive vs daycare industry) × 2 (spokesperson’s sex: male vs female) × 2 (crisis response appeal: rational vs emotional) between-subject online experiment was conducted to examine the effect of gender stereotype in crisis communication.

Results showed that either matching spokesperson sex with sex differed industry or matching sex differed industry with appropriate crisis response appeal can generate a more positive evaluation of the spokesperson and the organization. The results also revealed under which circumstances, the attractiveness of different sex of the spokesperson can either promote or mitigate people’s perceptions of the organization. Furthermore, when people are aware of a spokesperson’s sex, in a female-associated industry, a mismatching effect of a positive violation of a male-related stereotype overrides a matching effect of a female-related stereotype in crisis communication.

This study is among the first to identify how the gender of a spokesperson and industry type affect publics’ crisis response.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from the process evaluation of the Parallel Lives Programme (PLP), a child-to-parent abuse (CPA) prevention programme developed by the Media Academy Cymru in South Wales, UK. Whilst there has been a growing body of research examining CPA, empirical insight into interventions that support families experiencing CPA (including the children who use violence, their parent(s), siblings and wider family members) is lacking.

A process evaluation was used to examine the design and delivery of PLP from the perspective of the programme staff and the families who had completed the intervention. Several methods were used, including semi-structured interviews, online surveys, overt observations and file reviews. Forty-two people participated in the evaluation, including 6 practitioners, 19 parents and 17 children.

The findings highlight the need for specialised support/interventions for families that prioritise “children first”, relationship-focused, strength-based practices.

The study centres the experiences and voices of the parents and children who experience CPA and the practitioners who deliver support. Historically, these pivotal voices have been missing from practice and policy developments. The implications of this research extend beyond Wales, and it provides research, policy and practice recommendations aimed at addressing CPA in a therapeutic, non-punitive and responsive manner.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees had to switch to remote work. While some adjusted successfully to this transition, others have struggled. Leveraging information systems (IS) to adjust to major exogenous shocks is called digital resilience. The purpose of this paper is to understand what we can learn about employees' digital resilience from externally enforced transitions to remote work.

As digital resilience is challenging to measure, this study uses an embedded mixed methods approach. The authors conducted a qualitative analysis of 40 employees' statements on their remote work experience during the first six months of the pandemic and complemented these findings with scale-based digital resilience scores.

The authors find that employees' digital resilience largely depends on the amount of technical equipment and support they receive from their organizations as well as their ability and willingness to learn how to adequately use and communicate through information and communication technologies. Being self-disciplined and self-responsible positively affects digital resilience, while social isolation threatens it. Organizations can foster digital resilience building by encouraging digital networking, building a digital culture and netiquette, and treating digital resilience as a sociotechnical phenomenon.

This is one of the first empirical studies of digital resilience on a human level. It sheds light on the missing link between IS-enabled resilience and transitions to remote work. Specifically, it provides original insights into its development and manifestation in a remote work context during the COVID-19 pandemic. For researchers, it provides novel guidance on choosing appropriate measurement instruments to capture digital resilience.

This study analyses the organizational consequences of work–family conflict (WFC) among female nurses in health care sector. Moreover, this study focuses on the moderating effect of intrinsic motivation on the association between WFC dimensions with different organizational outcomes.

Data are collected from 347 female nurses working in health care sector at Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Multan and Bahawalpur regions of Pakistan, using random sampling technique. Regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses of this study.

The findings demonstrate that WFC conflict lowers job satisfaction, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. Contrary, WFC reduces job satisfaction, affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour and increases turnover intentions among female nurses. Moreover, intrinsic motivation moderates the association between WFC and certain organizational outcomes.

The study offers valuable insights for female nurses at health care sector about WFC and finally leads to theoretical contributions and practical implications for the healthcare sector of Pakistan.