A mindful path to the COVID-19 pandemic: an approach to promote physical distancing behavior

Psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic and turnover intention: The moderating effect of employee work engagement

The study aimed to understand the relationship between the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and turnover intention and the moderating role of employee engagement. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire through both hand deliveries of printed questionnaires and Google docs from 187 frontline employees in the Ghanaian public sector. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. There exists a positive and significant relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and employee turnover intentions. Out of the three dimensions of work engagement, vigor had a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between psychological impact and turnover intentions. This implies that the positive effect of the psychological impact of COVID-19 on turnover intentions is minimized, where employees have high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, thus their vigor is high rather than low. The study contributes to literature on employee work engagement by using the Job demands-resources model to unravel the specific dimension of employee engagement that can minimize the negative impact of COVID-19 on employees' turnover intention in the public sector in a developing country.

Circular economy of medical waste: novel intelligent medical waste management framework based on extension linear Diophantine fuzzy FDOSM and neural network approach

Environmental pollution has been a major concern for researchers and policymakers. A number of studies have been conducted to enquire the causes of environmental pollution which suggested numerous policies and techniques as remedial measures. One such major source of environmental pollution, as reported by previous studies, has been the garbage resulting from disposed hospital wastes. The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted into mass generation of medical waste which seems to have further deteriorated the issue of environmental pollution. This necessitates active attention from both the researchers and policymakers for effective management of medical waste to prevent the harm to environment and human health. The issue of medical waste management is more important for countries lacking sophisticated medical infrastructure. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to propose a novel application for identification and classification of 10 hospitals in Iraq which generated more medical waste during the COVID-19 pandemic than others in order to address the issue more effectively. We used the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method to this end. We integrated MCDM with other techniques including the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), linear Diophantine fuzzy set decision by opinion score method (LDFN-FDOSM), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) analysis to generate more robust results. We classified medical waste into five categories, i.e., general waste, sharp waste, pharmaceutical waste, infectious waste, and pathological waste. We consulted 313 experts to help in identifying the best and the worst medical waste management technique within the perspectives of circular economy using the neural network approach. The findings revealed that incineration technique, microwave technique, pyrolysis technique, autoclave chemical technique, vaporized hydrogen peroxide, dry heat, ozone, and ultraviolet light were the most effective methods to dispose of medical waste during the pandemic. Additionally, ozone was identified as the most suitable technique among all to serve the purpose of circular economy of medical waste. We conclude by discussing the practical implications to guide governments and policy makers to benefit from the circular economy of medical waste to turn pollutant hospitals into sustainable ones.

Addressing the Societal Challenges in Organizations: The Conceptualization of Mindfulness Capability for Social Justice

Social inequalities are partly caused by habitual organizational practices. In this vein, to overcome those, organizations now need to develop new organizational capabilities aimed at enhancing their attention towards societal issues. In our study, we apply the theory of mindfulness to explain how it may help organizations overcome habitual organizing that fuels social inequalities. Guided by the microfoundational perspective of organizational capability, we conceptualize individual characteristics, processes, and structures that collectively form mindfulness capability for social justice. We perceive it as an organizational capability that reflects the extent to which an organization possesses a collective social justice awareness, i.e., awareness of the impact on social justice in society through its organizational practices. We argue that, when adopted by organizations, mindfulness, by increasing the awareness of the organizational impact on society, helps notice, examine, and question the correctness of taken-for-granted organizational practices. From our perspective, this new capability will lead to changes in organizational practices that fuel social inequalities. Our study contributes to the literature on sustainable organizational development and mindfulness research in organizations. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Understanding the Pathways from Mindfulness to COVID-19 Vaccination Intention via Positive Psychology Attributes among Health Care Workers in China

OBJECTIVE

The present study aims to examine the association between mindfulness and COVID-19 vaccination intention, and the mediating role of presence of meaning in life and moral elevation in such association.

METHOD

In a cross-sectional study design, a total of 1733 health care workers (81.1% females, M_age = 34.16 ± 9.03) from four cities in China were recruited and completed an online survey that measured mindfulness, moral elevation, presence of meaning in life and COVID-19 vaccination intention.

RESULTS

It has been found that 73.1% of the participants reported an intention to receive COVID-19 vaccination. Mindfulness was positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination intention; Mediation analyses using structural equation modeling showed a significant indirect effect of mindfulness on COVID-19 vaccination intention, accounting for 42.4% of the total effect. Mindfulness was positively associated with COVID-19 vaccination intention directly via presence of meaning in life, and indirectly via moral elevation and presence of meaning in life.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings add knowledge of how mindfulness may increase COVID-19 vaccination intention, and underscore the potential need for mindfulness training, positive emotion promotion, presence of meaning in life interventions to improve acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination among health care workers.

Role of resilient leadership and psychological capital in employee engagement with special reference to COVID-19

Purpose

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unseen crisis lately, which has put organizational leadership and employee engagement (EE) to test. Resilient leadership (RL) helps an organization survive and keep employees engaged in the risky environment. Similarly, psychological capital (PsyCap) is known to exert an influence on EE, but PsyCap and EE have not been investigated together during the period of crisis. To address this gap, the present study aims to outline the importance of RL and PsyCap to keep the employees engaged in the information technology (IT) industry.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 265 samples of IT professionals were collected by using an online survey questionnaire pan India. The collected data was analyzed using regression analysis, structural equation modeling along with bootstrapping technique for mediation analysis and model fit indices analysis.

Findings

The results of the analysis confirm the positive impact of RL on EE and the partial mediation impact of PsyCap on the RL–EE relationship, and the findings exhibit that employees with a higher level of PsyCap contribute favorably to EE during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Originality/value

This study aims to assist IT practitioners in effectively incorporating RL to plan mitigation strategies. EE is an outcome of enhanced PsyCap of employees. To develop necessary skills and coping mechanisms to combat disruptions of such massive outbreaks, RL and PsyCap are crucial.

Modelling the role of social media usage in improving users well-being: a social enhancement model perspective

Purpose

Employees have gradually adopted social media sites and their applications that have been associated with enhanced communication and collaboration at the workplace. However, social technologies have both positive as well as negative consequences. The current study examines the impact of loneliness on employees' psychological well-being (PW); subsequently, the mediating role of social media use intensity (SMI) at the workplace. It also examines the moderating role of gender and management status of employees.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study conducted an online and offline survey using a cross-sectional design. Data were collected from 206 working professionals from the IT industry in India. Structural equation modelling was applied to analyse data.

Findings

Results revealed that employee loneliness is positively associated with SMI. Employee's SMI was positively associated with enhanced PW. Unexpectedly, employee loneliness is positively and significantly related to PW. However, the moderating roles of gender and management status of employees were not supported.

Practical implications

The current study can help managers, policymakers and organizations better understand the role of employee social media use in the workplace. Using the insights and understanding offered by the study, social media can be effectively utilized in the workplace. The study recommends that organizations may allow the use of social media at the workplace. Social media resources may also be helpful in improving employee communication and digital literacy.

Originality/value

The current study is a pioneer work and contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between loneliness, SMI and PW. This study has essential theoretical and managerial contributions.

An integrated socially responsible-efficient approach toward health service network design

Despite the fact that medical responses are crucial for saving precious lives during any humanitarian crisis (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), healthcare infrastructure in many communities are partially covered or are not covered yet. In order to strengthen the health system response to such crisis, especially in low- to middle-income communities, this paper extends a novel multi-objective model for designing a health service network under uncertainty which simultaneously considers efficiency, social responsibility, and network cost. For efficiency, a modified data envelopment analysis model is introduced and inserted into the proposed model to decrease the inefficiency of healthcare facilities belonging to the different tiers of the health system. For social responsibility, two measures of job creation and balanced development are incorporated into the extended model. This is not only considered to cope with the increased numbers of patients and disaster victims to healthcare facilities but also to deal with the challenge of the economy and the livelihoods of people during the crisis. Moreover, a novel mixed possibilistic-flexible robust programming (MPFRP) approach is developed to protect the considered network against uncertainty. To show the applicability of the extended model, a real-world case study is presented. The results reveal that contrary to fuzzy programming models, the MPFRP performs well in terms of social responsibility (72%), cost (8%), and efficiency (28%) and is able to make a trade-off between these three measures. In this study, the resilience level of the designed network is not addressed while disregarding any short-term stoppage owing to internal or external sources of disruption in designing may bring about a considerable loss.