The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has been devastating for international tourism, adversely affecting destinations, organizations, and local communities. In particular, the crisis highlights the need for local communities reliant on rural tourism to enhance their resilience to the risks simultaneously generated by the pandemic and accelerating impacts of climate change. This is important as the effects of these hazards are intertwined and cannot be treated in isolation. We explore community responses and resilience through case study Quebrada Verde, Peru, a small rural community in the Andes Mountains. Specifically, we report on a qualitative examination involving in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with key informants from the community, supplemented by relevant documentary analysis. Drawing on community resilience and social networks perspectives, we find that the community's preparedness to both threats is unbalanced. On one hand, the community eco-tourism system has developed sufficient tools to adapt to the temporary effects of COVID-19 derived from the community's self-organization skills and topophilia. Specifically, the community possesses a cohesive social structure, it has a solid cultural identity rooted in its customs and traditions, and maintains a social humour that enables it to see the positive aspects of adversity. On the other hand, the analysis of the measures towards strengthening the resilience to climate change delivers mixed results. In particular, the relationship that the community has built with other local organizations to successfully prevent and react to climate change is weak. Therefore, stronger efforts towards bridging this gap must be implemented in order to sustain the wider social network of such organizations, of which the community is a part. This would enable further development and implementation of appropriate risk management strategies to counteract climate change, enhancing the community's resilience of its eco-tourism system to this emergent threat. Importantly, this finding might be relevant to other local communities seeking to improve their resilience to COVID-19 and climate change.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the use of the soft systems methodology (SSM) to enhance the role of the higher education institution (HEI) stakeholder's action networks in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). We review the literature on sustainable development in HEIs, in particular the role of stakeholder networks for the implementation of SDGs in HEI. We outline some of the features of SSM as an approach to help make sense of this complexity. CATWOE analysis, a conceptual SSM tool, is applied to a stakeholder's network hosted by a Brazilian university with the purpose of achieving the SDGs as part of the community projects (HEI external engagement). Findings of the systemic application suggest that the use of some elements of SSM helps clarify and make sense of the role of the stakeholders and assists in formalising action networks to achieve SDGs.

The purpose of this study is to establish the prevalence of barriers to women’s leadership in the family business in terms of invisibility, the glass ceiling effect, and sexism. We conduct eight semi-structured interviews with women holding leading managerial roles in family businesses in Mexico to identify the factors that impede/facilitate their involvement. We apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in order to determine how these factors support/constrain women in their roles. We find that some factors and circumstances are critical for women to achieve an important leadership role in the family business. These factors entail levels of education and experience, the extent to which women participate in strategic decision making and governance of the firm, as well as the support of the company’s founder and other family members for these women’s efficacy and self-esteem. These results challenge some of the extant findings in the literature, thus enriching the current perspectives on the leadership role of women in family firms. Moreover, this research is the first attempt to analyze impediments to women under the TPB perspective as well as one of the few studies conducted on the topic in Latin America, specifically in Mexico.

Great works of literary fiction seem to mirror life and its complexity. This paper claims that engaging in reading fiction can be beneficial for OR practitioners as it enhances systems thinking and understanding of complex human affairs. Using the experience of reading a fiction book, we applied Causal Mapping (CM) to Reading Labs, where participants read and share their views of fiction literature to appreciate the complexity of multiple and differing reading perspectives. The approach we adopt hinges on the relationship between literature and OR, two disciplines which belong to different fields of knowledge (humanities and science, respectively), but when examined in more detail, connect in meaningful ways. We explore this connection to identify potential gains of increasing systemic thinking awareness in the reading groups' context. The findings of this interdisciplinary study show that use of CM (i) enhances systemic thinking by producing a synthesis and shared views on what was meaningful and useful; and (ii) translates the subjectivity produced by the shared reading experience into new actions strengthened by systemic thinking awareness. These results should be of interest to Soft/OR practitioners using CM and systems practitioners working on encouraging the use of systems thinking in systemic interventions.

In many households, preparation of food in normal times proves to be problematic, particularly when parents endeavour to keep their children on a balanced diet. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated this problem imposing the requirement of social distancing, which led to disruptions in the food supply chain and multiplication of responsibilities faced by families with children. The present study revisits the standard “Diet Problem” to address these challenges and to develop a participatory approach to provide a diversified weekly meal plan that is easy and fun but simultaneously complies with the unique requirements of each participant. This is done by providing a novel framework, which combines linear optimisation with the Parsimonious Analytic Hierarchy Process, a method for individual choices. This novel approach to participatory modelling is tested within two young family settings in Brazil. The model produced through this contemporary framework provides a weekly menu that best meets expectations of the members of a young family in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.