Working from Home and Digital Divides: Resilience during the Pandemic

Do Digital Technologies Influence the Relationship between the COVID-19 Crisis and SMEs’ Resilience in Developing Countries?

“…Ref. [17] claim that those who can work from home have improved economic resilience and increased personal safety in developing countries. According to work adjustment theory, the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed the way we work and the interaction between employers and employees [35].…”

“…Adopting digital technologies improves the company's competitiveness, productivity, and profitability while also ensuring its survival [16]. Digital technologies comprise such categories as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, big data analytics, advanced tracking and tracing technologies, wearables, and additive manufacturing [17][18][19].…”

Whether weather causes contention: assessing the ongoing resilience opportunity of telecommuting

“…The spatial data used in this research was nowhere near as granular as our data, but further research along these lines could usefully uncover more detailed relationships in suburban geographies where telecommuting is most likely, using additional transport data sources, different socio-economic variables, interaction terms, weather thresholds, and 'suburban' subsets. Furthermore, the substantial increase in experience of telecommuting during the pandemic may mean that future demand during adverse weather may be sufficient to detect contention in upload speeds (Budnitz & Tranos, 2021), which can be more easily linked to work activities. Finally, a case study approach building upon the understanding of contention described in this article could use broadband speeds in combination with other detailed data sources for periods of weather disruption in order to determine the extent of weather impacts, which depend on the time of day or locally-specific characteristics of infrastructure or population.…”

“…This demand is specifically for download speeds, which are "by far the most important feature for household users" (Nardotto et al, 2015, p336), and are more temporally variable, so we too use download speeds as a proxy for internet activity. Only the extreme demand for internet services during the pandemic, including massive increases in video-conferencing have made contention in upload speeds visible during the working day (Budnitz & Tranos, 2021).…”

Navigating learners towards technology-enhanced learning during post COVID-19 semesters

“…While some learners were conversant with the use of technology for teaching and learning, others were lagging in this regard [ 28 , 41 ]. Also, it is reported that while learners from advanced countries smoothly switched from face-to-face teaching to the use of technological devices for learning, learners from developing and underdeveloped countries were struggling to access technological devices for learning [ 6 , 11 ]. For instance, people from rural areas experienced digital social exclusion from telework while providing digital related services within Europe, besides same studies affirms that over 70% of California households have access to internet compared to less than 21% of African househoods.…”