The COVID-19 pandemic and organisational commitment of senior hotel managers

The COVID-19 pandemic will reduce the attractiveness of hospitality occupations. This particularly concerns senior management positions whose holders may substitute hospitality jobs with more secure and rewarding employment in other economic sectors. Organisational resilience of hospitality businesses, including their response to COVID-19, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices may, however, affect perceived job security of senior managers and, thus, influence their commitment to remain in their host organisations. This paper quantitatively tests the inter-linkages between the above variables on a sample of senior managers in hotels in Spain. It finds that the levels of organisational resilience and the extent of CSR practices reinforce perceived job security of managers which, in turn, determines their organisational commitment. Organisational response to COVID-19 affects perceived job security and enhances managers’ organisational commitment. To retain senior management teams in light of future disastrous events, hotels should, therefore, strengthen their organisational resilience and invest in CSR.     

Customer mistreatment and employee well-being: A daily diary study of recovery mechanisms for frontline restaurant employees in a hotel

Research on customer mistreatment towards frontline service employees in the hospitality industry has been steadily rising in recent years, but little is known about the mechanism underlying its detrimental impact on the non-work life of employees and why some of them could handle it effectively. By integrating conservation of resources theory with the stressor-detachment model, this daily diary study examined the effect of daily customer mistreatment on employees’ daily well-being at home (vigor and exhaustion) through daily psychological detachment. Employees’ recovery self-efficacy and the trait of resilience, which might mitigate the process were also examined. An experience sampling methodology was applied, and the survey data were gathered from 54 frontline restaurant employees conducted across 5 consecutive workdays. Results of hierarchical linear modeling supported all the hypotheses in this study. Our findings revealed a spillover effect of customer mistreatment and the importance of improving employees’ recovery in the hospitality context.     

Calculated risk? A cybersecurity evaluation tool for SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are among the least mature and most vulnerable in terms of their cybersecurity risk and resilience. In this article, we describe a methodology developed using the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) as a starting point. The NIST CSF does not meet all the needs of the SME IT leader, but it offers a solid foundation for a useful evaluation and recommendation methodology. We propose an SME cybersecurity evaluation tool (CET) that consists of a 35-question online survey to be completed by IT leaders to self-rate their maturity within the five NIST framework categories: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. We outline this approach to cybersecurity risk management before discussing its effectiveness and implications for practitioners.     

Resilience and well-being production among vulnerable consumers facing systematic constraints

This paper explores how vulnerable consumers within systematic constraints of economic inequality, institutional barriers, and social segregation in an urban environment cope with their vulnerabilities to achieve their well-being. Taking China's internal migrant workers as a research context, our study examines their vulnerable experiences and reveals the impact of systematic constraints on migrant workers' self-perception, interpretation, and actions. It discovers a staged process through which migrant workers acquire resilience to optimize life satisfaction by fulfilling a sense of control over their migration life. Through a situated approach to capture the contextual impact of systematic constraints on vulnerability experiences and the construction of resilient pathways to achieve well-being, this paper puts forward critical welfare issues such as inclusive marketplace, social capital, and community empowerment which are important to migrants' social integration and capability building. This calls for more coordinated efforts to promote effective resilience building and sustained well-being among resource-constrained consumers.     

Consumption as a social integration strategy in times of crisis: The case of vulnerable households

In this article, we focus on consumption in a context of economic hardship. From an empirical perspective, and using a qualitative methodology, we show how disadvantaged individuals and households maintain a level of consumption commensurate with the society in which they are integrated through a type of consumption conceived of here as “resilient”. Resilient consumption is characterized by being a type of expenditure oriented towards maintaining the role of consumer, that is, maintaining a minimum level of purchasing power, modifying to this end both the level and the structure of consumption, both of which are key elements in the resilience process. We identify five main strategies used by households that modify and restructure the consumption of basic goods and necessities in response to economic hardship. Key resilient consumption strategies include: reduction (cutting down on spending), substitution (replacement of one difficulty with another), compensation (pseudo‐consumption or reduced usage), transference (meta‐resilience) and integration (reinterpretation of difficulties as opportunities). We conclude that although consumption is a naturally resilient behaviour, in a crisis context, resilient practices focus on maintaining acquisition capacity in spite of reduced income.     

Resilience of sustainability‐oriented and financially‐driven organizations

To answer key questions concerning how negative and positive financial performance gaps motivate organizations to build more resilient systems, we develop a conceptual process model to reveal the process by which financially and sustainability‐driven organizations can translate these negative and positive financial performance gaps into organizational resilience. We specify the different modes of search behaviors that these organizations pursue when encountering negative and positive financial performance gaps. We then expand on group engagement model to theorize that vicarious search is likely to encourage limiting behaviors, whereas internal search is likely to foster promotion behaviors. Finally, we explain how both promoting and limiting behaviors can be helpful in improving organizational resilience. In this way, we hope to advance research that connects and integrates relatively disparate realms and, more specifically, to contribute to the sustainability, resilience, and performance feedback literatures.     

Managing supply chain resilience to pursue business and environmental strategies

Resilience has become a crucial topic in the field of strategic management as it requires companies to design resilient business models to tackle managerial and environmental disruptions of individual firms and supply chains. However, extant research still lacks deep insights into how companies design and manage supply chains according to the resilience principles. With this premise, this paper aims at conducting a state of the art review on supply chain resilience (SCR) considering 125 relevant papers collected from Scopus and Web of Science academic search engine. Starting from the results of the literature review, this study proposes a systemic framework of SCR assessment and contributes to improve the understanding of the impact of different empirically tested constructs on the development of the resilience concept. Further, the findings are summarized in several areas including barriers in developing resilience, metrics to measure the resilience performance, and effective strategies to foster the SCR. Finally, this study outlines promising future research directions for scholars and practitioners.     

Resources for business resilience in a COVID-19 world: A community-centric approach

COVID-19 has drawn renewed focus on the importance of resilience, both among practitioners and in academia, as companies struggle to cope with the rapid swings, changing patterns, and disruptions in supply and demand. This article identifies and delineates a way forward for companies to support resilience, particularly recognizing the wider communities they are nested in and the resources that exist there. To identify such productive resources, known as capitals, we provide a novel and actionable integrated capitals framework (ICF). ICF integrates 10 existing frameworks drawn from both practice and academia and is comprised of nine different forms of capital that businesses can leverage and contribute toward supporting resilience. We provide insights into how businesses can use this framework to achieve resilience through this useful, yet underutilized, path.     

Futures of Crisis,Futures of Urban Political Theory: Flooding in Asian Coastal Megacities

Coastal megacities across Asia have experienced devastating floods in recent years. Studies project dramatic increases in populations prone to chronic flooding and potential permanent inundation of densely populated urban areas in future decades. The uncertainties presented by future flood risks disrupt prevalent state visions of globalization‐driven prosperity. The emerging reality of a shift in relationship between water and urban settlements has begun driving recalibration of power relations around a range of issues, including longstanding contestations over infrastructure delivery, housing, land rights and political representation. Flood mitigation efforts have played out in debates over displacement and eviction, and distributional concerns about the costs and benefits of these initiatives. This article develops a conceptual framework for assessing the implications of projections of flood risk for urban political theory. The article begins by identifying political contestations that emerge around the varied ways water intersects with urban processes—through dynamics of permeability, flow and drainage, aquifers and pipes, and coastal defense. It then explores how projections of the crisis of flooding have reshaped three contemporary debates in urban politics: those around property rights and the question of ‘informality’; around neoliberalization and financialization; and around the rescaling of the state. Finally, it briefly deploys this framework to examine the case of Jakarta.     

The Japanese labour market during the global financial crisis and the role of non-standard work: A micro perspective

This paper analyses aggregate labour dynamics during the global financial crisis in Japan and the role of non-standard work using micro data. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, using comprehensive establishment-level datasets for the period 1991–2009, it provides a detailed portrait of the adjustment behaviour of establishments at the micro level. Second, it compares aggregate labour market dynamics during the global financial crisis with that observed during the 1997 crisis and decomposes the observed differences into components that can be attributed to changes in the micro-adjustment behaviour of Japanese establishments, changes in the incidence of non-standard work and changes in the distribution of shocks across establishments. It finds that the incidence of non-standard work has increased considerably, worker turnover is much higher among non-standard than standard workers and adjustments in working-time are less important for non-standard workers. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the employment response during the global crisis would have been smaller if the incidence of non-standard work remained at the level observed during the 1997 crisis. The relatively small employment response observed during the global financial crisis is therefore driven by factors other than the increase in the incidence of non-standard work.