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

Abstract

Managing under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemicCOVID-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...