Managing the Consequences of the COVID-19 in the Every-Day Working, Learning, and Interacting Life

Dear Colleagues,

At the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, a new coronavirus appeared in the form of unknown pneumonia. This was the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, the causative agent of the COVID-19 disease. As a consequence of this new pandemic, the world is currently witnessing profound changes in everyday life. The infection and the resulting death number forecasts represent an increasing threat to the economics of countries and the lives of people, mainly in the way they work, learn, and interact. In fact, in the last few months, the health emergency and the need for social distancing have drastically changed social habits, and the recurring question the world is asking itself is whether these changes are destined to continue in the future and to what extent. As the acute phase of the pandemic ends and people gradually return to normal life, the greatest challenge that most governments and companies are currently undergoing is the consequences in the way of working, learning, interacting, and in general the social impact of COVID-19 in the medium and long term.

The aim of this Special Issue is to address this question, gathering insights from scholars and practitioners that can help organizations to face this difficult time and complex working landscape generated by the coronavirus crisis. We look for original contributions that nurse the discussion or propose a novel understanding of the changes in the way of working that any private, public, and social organization has to face to survive, to protect its sustainability, and to reframe its value creation mechanisms. Countries’ and organizations’ crisis-response efforts are in full motion, and scholars must contribute to understanding how the way of working is changed and what will never be as it was previously.

The Special Issue will gather contributions related to themes from a range of perspectives. Potential topics include but are not restricted to:

• What lessons can we learn from the crises so far in the changes to the way of working, learning, and interacting?
• How can these insights help to better define the new ways of working, learning, and interacting in order to emphasize the positive impacts as well as reduce the negative ones?
• In which way has the pandemic changed the culture of work, accelerating greater interpenetration of work and private life?
• Has the pandemic changed the way of working, learning, and interacting forever, or will things gradually return to the way they were before?
• How can we best understand how to prevent and react to a complete imbalance between work and private life?
• How have the boundaries of a canonical working day been changed by the pandemic?
• Will physical offices disappear? Or will the work of the future be more likely a fluid mix of physical meetings and remote collaboration?
• While it is true that the future of work will be more agile than it has ever been, is it equally true that physical locations with their advantages in terms of ergonomics and relationships will continue to play an important role?
• How can new technologies help to mitigate any problems linked to the increasingly blurred boundaries between work and private life?
• Is distance learning as effective as face-to-face learning? How can the two modalities help each other and balance with other aspects of life?
• What will be the social impact of the COVID-19 in the way people interact and will interact with each other when the pandemic ends?

Prof. Dr. Guendalina Capece
Dr. Flavia Di Costa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Informatics is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.