Digital transformation of relocated higher education institutions in Ukraine under martial law

Academic resilience and emotional intelligence are considered important personal resources for furthering students’ academic performance. However, many educational organizations seem to trivialize the performance implications of these constructs in teachings and curriculum. Consequently, it can decrease not just their academic performance but also their employability, as they lack the generic competencies to adapt and survive in a stressful context. Even so, empirical evidence on integrating academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance remains unexplored in the Nigerian university context. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the linkages between academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance in Nigeria. The partial least square (PLS) modeling method was utilized for testing the stated hypotheses with data collected from 179 final year undergraduate students in the regular B.Sc. Business Administration and B.Sc. Marketing program at Delta State University, Nigeria. From the PLS results, the study reported that academic resilience was positively related to emotional intelligence (β = 0.125, p = 0.007), academic resilience (β = 0.231, p = 0.000) and emotional intelligence (β = 0.260, p = 0.000) were positively related to academic performance, and emotional resilience mediated the positive relationship between academic resilience and academic performance (β = 0.057, p = 0.005). While academic resilience predicted academic performance, it also predicted emotional intelligence, which affected academic performance significantly and positively.

From a global perspective, the business environment has become highly dynamic, unpredictable, and competitive due to external forces – mostly technology – that generate change. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of digital technologies on South African business sectors. The sample includes small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the KwaZulu-Natal province. Being qualitative by design, the study used semi-structured interviews for data collection, with eight interviews in the Durban area. SME managers were purposefully selected as participants based on their management positions in the business/company and that they oversee the business operation and understand the influence of digital transformation in the business. The interviews were then transcribed after data collection to determine any recurring themes. In the effectiveness of digital transformation, the study identified themes such as “gaining exposure” and “gaining effective sales figures” as a result of implementing digital transformation, which was indicated by six of eight participants. The findings showed that digital transformation significantly affects building customer relationships and ensuring easy accessibility of the business. The results further indicate online selling and digital marketing as the leading digital platforms successfully implemented by most South African SMEs. Lastly, the study revealed digital maintenance and rapid changes in technology as challenging factors. Moreover, the study recommends that South African SMEs implement more available digital technologies to gain additional exposure.

The resilience concept has attracted interest across many fields in the recent years. The interdisciplinary nature of the concept has led to the existence of numerous definitions, interpretations and measurement approaches. For this reason, there is no acceptable universal understanding of resilience across disciplines. Even though the concept is conceptualized differently in the small retail business field, scholars seem to commonly relate resilience to the ability of business to adapt to disruptions that threaten existence. However, resilience measuring has been a highly contested aspect in the sector. As such, neither key resilience attributes nor universally applicable criteria for resilience measuring exist in the small retail sector. At the same time, small retail businesses are increasingly exposed to direct and indirect threats that jeopardize their resilience prowess. Therefore, it is vital to develop approaches for assessing resilience levels and monitor changes over time. This paper critically examines current approaches to developing resilience measurement tools. Thereafter, it proposes the most applicable approach for developing performance measures of resilience for use in the small retail business sector. A review of key frameworks for resilience measuring within climate, community, livelihoods, organizational and business sectors was conducted. Frameworks and approaches for resilience measuring that has been in use in the past decade and half were selected. The main focus was on exploring methodological aspects, resilience attributes and variations in the interpretation of the resilience concept within different frameworks. It was revealed that the generic application of frameworks for resilience measuring in the small retail business sector is not appropriate. Thus, there is a need for developing contextualized frameworks to guide resilience measurement in the small retail sector.