Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impactof COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : V-X
Correspondence :  nscott1@usc.edu.au

Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impactof COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : 1 – 13
Submitted: June15, 2020; Revised: Nov20, 2020; Accepted: Nov22, 2020
Correspondence :  mohamedaslamalm@gmail.com

The aim of this study is to investigate the inter-temporal relationship between tourism demand and tourism employment in Sri Lanka over the period of 1970-2018 using time series data. In order to attain the objective, this study uses the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) Bounds cointegration technique. The cointegration test results illustrate that there exists an asymmetric cointegration relationship between the variables. The NARDL technique finds that if the international tourism demand increases by 1000 people, 157 and 113 people will get the tourism-related total employment opportunity in the long-run and the short-run, respectively. Further, it confirms that if the tourism demand decreases by 1000 people, 45 and 43 people will lose tourism-related employment in the long-run and the short-run, respectively. These findings are empirically important in these days because of spreading the COVID 19 pandemic in Sri Lanka.

Keywords: COVID 19, tourism demand, tourism employment, NARDL, Sri Lanka

Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impactof COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : 14-23
Submitted: Jul 07, 2020; Revised: Nov 04, 2020; Accepted: Nov 05, 2020
Correspondence :  rangana@mgt.sab.ac.lk

The COVID-19 pandemic started to attack Sri Lanka in the middle part of the tourism season. During this period a larger number of tourists were enjoying in Sri Lanka while some other tourists were already purchased their holidays. The effect of COVID 19 global pandemic to the tourism industry caused the complete shutdown of tourism not only Sri Lanka, but also in the global context. Top tourist generating markets of Sri Lanka are China, India and UK and these countries are highly affected by this pandemic. The main objective of this review paper is to identify the impact of COVID 19 pandemic on the tourism and hospitality industry employees in Sri Lanka and second, to identify the future challenges faced by the employees of the tourism industry in Sri Lanka.  The study was carried out using qualitative methodology with the qualitative data collection techniques. The personal interviews were carried out with the public and private sector officers to get their opinions and suggestions such as Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Hotel Association, Sri Lanka Inbound travel operators, Sri Lanka Institute of National Tourist guide lecturers. The findings revealed that the industry is badly affected and presently around 12000 tourists are blocked in the country. There are more than 400,000 direct and indirect tourism and hospitality employees in the industry lost their jobs or income sources. All the potential income sources of the country have been blocked and therefore the local community has faced a severe financial crisis. It will not be easy to retain the employees in the tourism and hospitality industry since they expect the job security.  Thus, it is essential to go for resilience strategies immediately like such as giving governments support for the industry, conduct programmes to keep positive mind-set of tourism employees to remain within the industry during this hardship, empowering employees effectively. In this critical situation, the industry expect the active mediation of government to facilitate them to face this devastating situation with favourable concessions, relief packages, reduction of tax burden, favourable policies and strategies   to rebuild the industry, Tourism Employees Relief Package (TERP) etc. However, it will not be easy in short run in the pandemic affected economies and societies. Therefore, it needs to have effective resilience strategies first, to retain the employees with the industry and next to rebuild the ruined industry

Keywords: COVID 19 Pandemic, Resilience, Sri Lanka, Tourism Employments

Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : 24-37
Submitted: Aug12, 2020; Revised: Nov 04, 2020; Accepted: Dec17, 2020
Correspondence :  heshanikaushalya07@gmail.com

Coronavirus is a noval continuous hazard everywhere around the world, marked as pandemic and Sri Lanka is one of the countries that endure most during this novel infection outbreak. It is advised maintain physical distancing. Sri Lanka has implemented some policy interventions aimed at physical distancing while closing schools, universities and workplaces.  Several organizations across the country opted for remote working after the government of Sri Lanka announced a nationwide curfew to attenuate the spread of infection. This empirical study attempts to investigate how workplace isolation impact on job satisfaction of academics in private sector universities in Sri Lanka during Covid 19 pandemic. A mixed study method was used. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Questionnaires were distributed to 100 academics and semi-structured interviews were conducted among 20 academics by using convenient sampling technique. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression analysis and thematic analysis, and finally triangulation. The results of the study revealed that workplace isolation have a significant negative relationship and impact on job satisfaction. Moreover, physical isolation and informational isolation negatively related to job satisfaction, while informational isolation impacts more on job satisfaction than physical isolation. The findings of the study concluded that workplace isolation result in less job satisfaction in remote setting. Further, the study recommended that it would be important for the employing organizations to provide training opportunities with better management of remote setting to face challenges.

Keywords: Work place isolation, Job satisfaction, Covid 19 pandemic, Remote setting

Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : 38-52
Submitted: Submitted: Oct 27, 2020; Revised: Nov 27, 2020; Accepted: Dec 31, 2020
Correspondence :  pethmidesilva@gmail.com

The imposed mobile restrictions in the age of Covid-19 has accelerated digital transformation in every aspect of the business environment. This era has ramped-up integration of social media strategy to businesses while converging both digital and traditional business platforms. Social media integration as a subset of electronic commerce that facilitates interactions between the service provider and customers; is termed as S-Commerce. Accordingly, this paper overlooks how does the S-Commerce has evolved in the following business industries; S-Banking, S-Education, S-Tourism in order to overcome the negative consequences of the Covid-19. The study incorporated a reviewing strategy while analysing the extant literature refers to the development of S-Commerce. The review revealed that innovations in integrating social media strategy to business processes help in maintaining and progressing operational resilience.

Keywords: COVID-19, E-Commerce, S-Commerce

Journal Title: Journal of Management and Tourism Research
Volume : Special Issue on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
Page : 52-59
Submitted: Feb 10, 2021; Revised: Feb 26, 2021; Accepted: Mar 2, 2021
Correspondence : njanadari@kln.ac.lk

The changing business environment characterized by uncertainty has made it difficult for business organizations to cope with new normal while running their business operations smoothly especially facing the global pandemic of COVID 19. Herein, managing human resources has become even more challenging because of the challenges that can come with the workforce’s health-related issues while enhancing and boosting their morale towards their performance in the journey of achieving the established organizational goals and objectives. The current study has focused on carrying out a comprehensive literature review exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organizational human resources. The empirical findings revealed that the field of human resource management function has drastically changed with the managers’ new perspectives towards managing organizational human resources effectively and efficiently. The study has also presented some valuable insights with relates to effective strategies that can be implemented to overcome the challenges in front of managing people at work.

Keywords: COVID-19, Human Resource Management