The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the attractiveness of work in the Iraqi health sector by looking at the mediating role of employees' attitudes. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 218 health sector employees. The results revealed that there is a significant impact of COVID-19 pandemic on employees' attitudes that influence their decision to quit the health sector and look for jobs in other sectors. As health sector employees are prone to suffer the most in the pandemic, this crisis significantly affected the attractiveness of jobs in the health sector, leading to an increase in employees' negative attitudes and their desire to leave work.

In any environment, but particularly in a developing country such as Iraq, it is essential for institutes of higher education to readily adapt to and make the most productive use of the latest technologies. To assess these organizations' readiness for change, researchers conducted a study of 285 employees at Southern Technical University in Basrah, Iraq. In examining the factors that affect employees' ability to accept new technology, the researchers focused on the interactive role of general self-efficacy. The results show that employees' acceptance of new technology requires a high level of coordination among several external and internal variables that affect employees' engagement with the technology. The study also highlights the importance of training to enhance employees' belief in their ability to successfully use new systems to achieve organizational goals.

Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 epidemic, work stress among health sector employees has risen too high. The study aims at determining the effect of the current coronavirus epidemic in the form of stress perceived among the medical workers in Pakistan and to discover the moderating role played by a healthy climate in offsetting it. The data was collected from 255 medical workers through a self-administered online questionnaire. Multiple Hierarchical Regression was used as a tool to test the hypotheses of the study. The results obtained indicate a correlation between the pandemic and the stress caused by it among the health workers, whereas, the role of a wholesome climate in the reduction of stress among them was found lacking. Sub-hypotheses indicate that the healthy environment provided by supervisors is effective in reducing the impact of workers' handling of the Covid-19 epidemic and perceived stress, while the healthy environment provided by hospitals in general or by workgroups fails to cause such positive change. This revelation necessitates the adoption of compulsory precautionary measures on the part of relevant authorities, because increase in stress caused by the pandemic can prove more lethal than the pandemic itself. The threat of the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as a massive socio-economic challenge for the global community, especially for the developing countries like Pakistan which faces serious socio-economic challenges in the current scenario. On account of the similarity of situations, the results obtained through this study can be safely generalized to other developing countries, particularly from the South Asian region.

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Purpose This study aims to identify the intentions of immigrant entrepreneurs to start new projects by investigating the role of influence of institutional support, social context, cultural intelligence, self-efficacy, optimizing personality traits and hierarchy legitimacy on intentions to start new ventures. In addition, the strength of the relationship for such factors and intentions to start new ventures was determined through the moderator role of easy access to venture capital. Design/methodology/approach To this end, this study complements the academic literature by integrating the structural equation modeling (SEM) and multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. Thus, the MCDM (i.e. analytic hierarchy process and vlsekriterijumska optimizcija i kaompromisno resenje [VIKOR]) is an effective approach to solving the problem of complexity and evaluation (i.e. multiple evaluation criteria, important criteria and data variation). Hence, to complete the strategic guideline solution, this study uses a survey for collecting data from 202 immigrants in Malaysia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Singapore. Findings The results from SEM prove several critical factors of immigrants’ entrepreneurs. These factors of immigrants’ entrepreneurs can be vital for academics and host countries. By focusing on these aspects and by developing some personality traits (such as self-efficacy and optimal personality traits), these factors can contribute a good deal to increasing the capabilities of immigrant’s entrepreneurs toward entrepreneurial intentions. In the validation, the statistical objective method indicates that the immigrants' prioritizations in all countries are supported by the systematic ranking. Thus, entrepreneurial intentions for immigrants can pursue the order proven by the VIKOR results. Research limitations/implications This study has some significant practical and theoretical implications. Practically, the study findings will enable managers to develop strategies to support immigrants for entrepreneurial intentions to start new ventures. Originality/value The novelty of the context under given circumstances of global environment adds to the originality of this study. Several previous studies have also emphasized the need for this type of study in other contexts. The findings can call managers’ attention toward a critical issue of immigrants’ entrepreneurial intentions to start new ventures.