Faculty from the College of Business Administration at Texas A&M University-Kingsville have planned or started research based on the coronavirus COVID-19.
Dr. Ruth Chatelain-Jardon, associate professor, and Dr. Jose Daniel, assistant professor, both in the management, marketing, and information systems departments, will look at the moderating effect of technological skill on job demands and employee outcomes. Because of COVID-19, thousands of employees had to conduct their work activities from home, thus considerably increasing their use of technology.
"We expect that for some employees these abnormal job demands will not be as difficult to handle due to their superior technological expertise,” Chatelain-Jardon said. "For others, it will be more complex, difficult, and time-consuming due to their lower ability to use and manage technology. We expect that these two scenarios will yield significantly different results for employee’s performance, innovative behavior, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction.”
They have begun work to identify scales for each variable involved and they expect to collect data using hard copy and electronic versions of the survey, said Chatelain-Jardon.
This research is still in the early stages as they await approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board and must collect data. However, they expect to have the paper ready to be sent to a journal in about six months.
"We expect to confirm that the influence of these harshen job demands on performance, innovative behavior, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction, will be lower for employees who exhibit a higher degree of technological skills,” Chatelain-Jardon said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Gijs Van Oort, adjunct professor in the marketing, management, and information systems department, has proposed research that will compare time-based trending patterns of COVID-19 impacted citizens of the Coastal Bend region with those of an urban location. The findings, Van Oort said, will be matched to data from economic development organizations to assess the economic impact of the disease on the regional economy.
"My overall intent is to identify and evaluate a time-based and region-specific response to current and future disasters,” he said. "The study will draw from clinical data from HASA, a regional Health Information Exchange, covering the Central Texas and Gulf Coast regions, surveillance data from area public health departments, and data from regional economic councils.”
Van Oort said he hopes the results of this project will establish Texas A&M-Kingsville as a valuable data aggregator and collaborator for the region. He expects the project to offer key insights into the impact of the COVID-19 spread to rural and urban Texas communities.
-TAMUK-
