Narrow Results

This chapter examines the impact of COVID-19 news in the USA on the volatility of financial markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) zone. We examine the effect of surprises from financial markets announcements relating to new, confirmed, and death cases of COVID-19 in each country in the sample. We use the GARCH (1.1) specification by incorporating the surprise component in the estimated model during the period from January 1, 2019 until December 31, 2020. The empirical findings show that the evolution of the daily returns and volatilities of the stock indexes of the MENA zone used in our research shows very significant peaks in particular in the first three months of 2020 during the most significant spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. We show that the announcements of new cases of COVID-19 in the United States (NCUSA) have a significant impact on the Lebanon stock index and on Tunisia’s stock index. Announcements of confirmed cases (CCUSA) of COVID-19 present a relative and insignificant impact on all stock market indices of the MENA zone used in our research. Finally, the announcements of the death cases of COVID-19 in the United States (DCUSA) have a significant impact on the stock market index of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. This chapter is the first to examine the effect of surprises from financial markets announcements relating to new, confirmed, and death cases of COVID-19 on the volatility of financial markets in the MENA zone.

Climate change poses increasingly serious risks to human society. Climate change is the outstanding survival and ethical issue of our time. Climate change is now moving the planet into new uncharted risky states since civilization began. Climate change risk management, (climate risk management for short) is a best practice. Urgent action is needed…

In view of the rise of extreme events and increasing frequency of transboundary crises occurring worldwide, crisis readiness becomes increasingly pertinent.

The aim of this study is to develop a questionnaire assessing the crisis ready mindset of Singaporean youths and examine how cognitive biases and cultural variables influence the crisis ready mindset.

A crisis ready mindset can be broken down into six dimensions:

• Perceived possibility of crises
• Preparation for crises
• Reaction to surprise element of crises
• Emotional reaction
• Cognitive processes
• Coping ability

To avoid cognitive biases in crisis readiness, there are strategies that can be undertaken at the individual and national level. On the individual level, the premortem technique can be adopted. Recommendations on crisis communications to the public will also be discussed.

After reading this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• Identify and define the elements of a crisis
• Identify and define key crisis response strategies
• Identify the specific tactics employed via social media to address a crisis
• Apply crisis response strategies to specific crisis scenarios
• Create crisis communication plans via social media to address various sports-related crises

Cooperatives have been given much-needed attention now by the Indian government through forming a separate Ministry of Cooperation. However, a lot has to be done before taking pride in the same. This chapter emphasises on the cooperative model to promote local institution-building in the post-COVID-19 era. Influenced by the institutional theory, the chapter discusses the gaps at the ground level and also provides suggestions to strengthen the cooperative sector in the country. A case is discussed from the successful dairy cooperatives in India that played a significant role in times of the COVID-19 crisis. The findings of the case discuss the interventions of the cooperatives in generating awareness towards safety, solidarity, accountability, providing stability, maintaining the value chain, securing finances, and supporting community welfare even during the time of the pandemic. Through this, the chapter highlights the cooperatives’ abilities in generating inclusive development in the country even during the time of crisis. This chapter is based on the primary information collected through a qualitative research method that includes in-depth interviews with the cooperative members.

This chapter provides an in-depth examination of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Lebanon, with a specific focus on the pivotal role played by women. Offering both a historical overview and a contemporary reality check, it establishes an overarching framework within which entrepreneurship in Lebanon is comprehensively described and explored. The narrative delves into the emergence and evolution of the ecosystem against the backdrop of a turbulent environment, shedding light on the progressively evolving role of women entrepreneurs. A detailed analysis of the current status of women in Lebanon highlights the challenges and barriers that female entrepreneurs encounter. This chapter also emphasizes the active engagement of women entrepreneurs in various sectors and concludes with an outlook on the future.

This chapter introduces the system for crisis management in Sweden. Over the last century, Sweden has gone from being a poor European backwater to being among the countries with the highest human development in the world. The droughts and harsh winters that killed thousands and drove numerous Swedes to emigrate in the past are mere distractions today and the contemporary system for crisis management is designed to deal with a broader variety of crises than the ones triggered by natural hazards. The system is based on the principles of responsibility, parity and proximity, and distributes sector and area responsibility for crisis management to numerous actors. It is built to a great extent on collaboration between these actors, which is challenging but working relatively well in the cultural context of consensus-seeking and compliance to official guidelines and accepted rules of engagement. However, the system is in itself ambiguous in the sense of distributing responsibility to all kinds of actors and then focusing almost exclusively on public actors in legislation, guidelines and practice. There is also often a gap between policy and practice concerning how area responsibility is exercised, and a lack of clarity in current sector specific legislation.

The hospitality industry has subsequently been struck by a range of disasters. Either; globally or regionally, natural or man-made disasters. Reflecting the hospitality and tourism industry’s vulnerability to hazardous events in the internal and external environment, they have caused dramatic fluctuations in Tourist arrivals and revenue. The chapter investigates the impact of these disasters and crises on hospitality and tourism industry. Aims to review some attempts to investigate the impact of disasters, how emergency planning could mitigate these impacts, and how to recover from it. Furthermore, it reviews the theories and models which could be used as an effective strategies to cope with uncertainty, how to plan, manage, and recover from such events. Emergency plans used by industry players to overcome the effect of such events and quick return to normality. Emergency planning could mitigate the effect of such events and recover from such disasters. The finding also emphasizes the power of media in clearing the ambiguity, which helps marketing efforts towards tourists to change their attitudes and visit safe rather than visiting hazardous destinations. Effective planning and the urgent need for better cooperation, coordination and awareness efforts among the industry stakeholders, government agencies, and local communities could mitigate the negative impact of hazardous events, allowing organizations to learn from the past to prevent the same effects in the future.

This research is about disaster risk reduction and management using learning from past disasters as theoretical framework because disasters and crises continue to re-occur for the same reasons they could have been prevented and mitigated. This chapter has two main aims. First, to consider how lessons from past disasters, may be linked to strategies for disaster risk reduction and management. Second, critically review how lessons from disasters can be made actionable in an organizational context using conceptual model of actionable learning from disasters. Historically, proximate cause and nature of risk, crisis and disaster has generated intense theories and models in both the social and pure sciences. Albeit the applied implications of existing risk and disaster theories are questionable, this research informs the debates about risk, crisis and disaster management theory and practice by considering and reflecting on mindfulness, complexity, modernity, fragility, isomorphic learning, and policies ambiguity; and the application of disasters lessons from cross-organizational isomorphism, event isomorphism and self-isomorphism. One of the fundamental contributions involved using case studies of two emergency and disaster response organizations in Ghana and Nigeria which were used to address the issues raised in the research. In conclusion, the chapter reflected on the challenges of learning from past disasters, devoted to the explanation of disaster risk reduction strategies and its components: identification, prevention, reduction, mitigation and appraisal, evaluation, management and communication, flexibility, resilience and robustness. The main lessons and implications from “actionable learning from disasters model” to disaster risk reduction and management are discussed.