Research consultancy
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
This section presents the literature review inline to the findings of other schoolars
2.1 Empirical literature review
This section presents literature review in lne to othr authors
2.2 COVID-19 and its impacts globally
Impact of COVID-19 across the global economy will be profound. Already, as described in greater detail in the policy brief ‘Shared responsibility, Global Solidarity’ on the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, markets and supply chains have been disrupted, businesses are required to close or scale back operations, and millions have or will lose their jobs and livelihoods.2 ILO has estimated that full or partial lockdown measures now affect almost 2.7 billion workers, represent- ing around 81% of the world’s workforce, while the IMF projects a significant contraction of global output in 2020. COVID-19 is lurching the world economy towards a global recession, which will be strikingly different from past recessions.
The number of confirmed cases will be increasing rapidly unless we launch several awareness-raising campaigns to bring information on prevention and symptoms of the disease to tens of thousands of people, especially those who live in rural areas with no access to the internet or other information sources to survive the onslaught of COVID-19. Owing to the generous support of Sign of Hope, Relief and Development Peer Foundation (RDP) was able to reach 50,983 individuals through awareness sessions and train 141 community health volunteers (CHVs) on the preventive measures of COVID-19 in 7 districts of Ibb and Taizz governorates. RDP has also provided essential Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to 236 supported FDPs and 9 health facilities in the targeted districts. Besides, 800 packs of masks and gloves were being distributed while raising awareness for the public
The virus can spread from an infected person’s mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe. These particles range from larger respiratory droplets to smaller aerosols. Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 metre (short-range). A person can be infected when aerosols or droplets containing the virus are inhaled or come directly into contact with the eyes, nose, or mouth and The virus can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings, where people tend to spend longer periods of time. This is because aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 metre (long-range). People may also become infected by touching surfaces that have been contaminated by the virus when touching their eyes, nose or mouth without cleaning their hands, Following the initial outbreak in China, in early January 2020, COVID-19 began rapidly spreading across all regions of the world, achieving a pandemic status. Flattening the contagion curve became a priority in many countries in an attempt to reduce the load on the healthcare system and the overall mortality rate. Several countries enacted shelter-in-place and social distancing measures to reduce interpersonal contact and mobility in order to curb transmission of the virus. This was often implemented through massive “stay at home” media campaigns aimed at altering citizens’ habits. While the health measures enacted have been, by and large, homogeneous across countries, compliance with these rules varied widely with local context. In the absence of perfect enforcement capacity by states, cultural attitudes and behavioral norms, which typically vary from country to country, can make an important difference and explain deviations in voluntary compliance. This is all the more true when it comes to individual mobility decisions, which entail a delicate trade-off between the chance of contracting (or diffusing) a disease and the economic (and individual well-being) costs associated with significant alterations of daily activities (Salzberger, Glück, & Ehrenstein, 2020).
People who live in a community often have common interests and values. This is why organizations develop different ways of handling challenges of pandemics in line with the community’s interest and their way of life. Community awareness often refers to the degree that people generally know about each other, about social norms and people’s different roles within the community, and about issues that affect the community (Aldila, et al., 2020).
Community awareness is essential as it enable the community to reduce on their resentment towards specific laws that the government may have put in place. Having a proper community awareness is very critical towards achieving community acceptance of given laws and policies and this increases community participation towards their common cause, Community awareness as describe by Hill is the best way where in family elders recognize their role in the family& recognize their personal capabilities and strengths& appreciate their responsibilities in the community regarding a specific activity in the community (Prandi et al., 2020).
Awareness of any pandemic is very essential to the community as it enables the community to be prepared and provide the support to the vulnerable population to help in reducing the risk of the disease spreading further to other members. In early 2020, the COVID-19 (caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus) pandemic shocked the world, almost bringing it to an unprecedented stop. The new coronavirus apparently started to spread in China during December 2019, before moving to Thailand, Japan, the Republic of Korea (first confirmed cases on 20 January 2020), then to the United States, Vietnam, Singapore , and, at the end of January 2020, to Australia, Nepal, Europe (first cases in France on 25 January 2020 and later in Germany, Finland, Italy, Malaysia, Canada, the Middle East, and other countries of the Western Pacific Region and South-East Asia Region, and (3) onwards to Russia, Africa, and Latin America. On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 a pandemic. By 31 July 2020, COVID-19 had spread across 217+ countries and territories, with almost 17.1 million confirmed cases and 668,073 deaths. America then had confirmed 9.15 million cases, Europe 3.31 million, South-East Asia 2 million, Eastern Mediterranean 1.53 million, Africa 0.75 million, and the Western Pacific 0.31 million cases.
2.2 Technology on oil imports
Information systems software covers vast areas of technologies such as mobile and security, wireless technology, software development, telecommunications and intelligent systems. According to Kwok Hung Lau & Haibo Huang (2012) Information system has a huge impact on industries, the community in general and our daily lives. Information systems software can be applied to many fields. One of the emerging applications in recent years is in most of the organizations to enhance better performance while (Lee & Kim, 2016) notes that Information systems software is fast becoming one of the main drivers of change, posing new strategic challenge. The business environment today has been undergoing unprecedented change and many companies are seeking new ways to stand out from the competition by sustaining their competitive advantage. In today’s highly competitive global marketplace, the pressure on organization is to find new ways of creating and delivering value to customers in growing stronger.
According to Laudon & Laudon, (2016) technology can be thought of as the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. From the invention of the wheel to the harnessing of electricity for artificial lighting, technology is a part of our lives in so many ways that we tend to take it for granted.
Pearlson, Saunders, & Galletta, (2016) emphasizes that the need for information systems development cannot be understood unless one also understands the use of software in the organization and unless the software can be applied to the organization to enhance its better performance and enable the organization achieve better performance.
The integration of information technology (IT) and business processes has irrevocably changed the way in which modern organisations operate. according Grant & Meadows, (2016), The majority of medium-to-large organisations invest significant amounts of time, money and effort on information systems (IS); which combine hardware, software and networking capacity to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes. In some circumstances the IS/IT that supports a business process becomes so integral that it can be very difficult to differentiate between them. The way in which organisational accounting processes have become embedded and reliant upon accounting information systems (AIS) is an apt example of this phenomenon.
Pinedo, (2016) indicates that Information systems software works hand in hand with the hardware to enable the organization be in position to achieve its goals and objectives. Computers, keyboards, disk drives, iPads, and flash drives are all examples of information systems hardware.
Chen et al., (2016) indicates that Software is not tangible it cannot be touched. When programmers create software programs, what they are really doing is simply typing the list of the organization’s instructions that tell the hardware what to do. There are several categories of software, with the two main categories being operating-system software, which makes the hardware usable, and application software, which does something useful. Examples of operating systems include Microsoft Windows on a personal computer and Google’s Android on a mobile phone. Examples of application software are Microsoft Excel and Angry Birds.
According to Huang et al., (2013), Governments around the world are under the pressure from citizens and business to be more open and transparent in managing public funds, deliver quality public services as per needs of citizens therefore,inthe last quarter of 2017, the world wide expenditure on software development was 480 billion dollars (Hughes et al., 2017).This expenditure was in information systems software to enable better service delivery and improve on general public sector performance.
According to Andrade & Doolin (2016) Internet and intranet technology has practical integrative applications for organizations. In addition to the practical use of IT as an integrative mechanism, the management of technology also has increased. makes a strong argument that companies use IT to structure organizations. In addition, he argues that he and many others consider the management of IT as the biggest challenge. The research from this thesis addresses both of these two issues; namely, the use of IT for integration and the implications associated with the management of information technology itself.
According to Rana et al., (2017) information systems initiatives in India was first started in 1990 with a minimal financial investment into National Informatics Centre to enable computerization of operations and automation of the pension fund. This was to eliminate the several challenges with the mismanagement and poor record keeping of the files of the pensioners.
Krecie (2016) reports that the government of Philippines invests around 8-10% of its Gdp on Information systems to enable integrating the operations of government agencies and also on improving transparency in public sector. These financial investments in information systems by different public sector organizations across the globe, is a manifestation of the long-term benefits of the service in enhancing better organizational performance.
The government of South Africa has over the last decade, recognized the importance of information and communications technology (ICT) and more recently Information systems in improving the standards of service quality and increasing the overall efficiencies of government (Aisara & Pather, 2011). As a result, the government has provided systems software to different public institution amounting to over R14 billion during2015/2016 financial year.
Abdullahi(2014),reports that the government of Nigeria in an effort to eliminate inefficiencies in service delivery and improve general performance, the government invested 32 billion dollars in 2015 to improve on the network systems and elimination of inefficiencies in the Information systems performance.
