The adoption of cutting-edge technologies to steer business activities during community lockdown to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, even if involuntarily, provides evidence that technologies not only offer competitive advantages but also provides a means for survival, by improvising existing business models. In June 2019, we issued a call for papers to address the awareness, adoption, and implementation challenges of technologies that can drive businesses of all sizes in the fourth industrial revolution. We intended to identify as critical elements the “must-have” and a “nice to have” technologies for small businesses and innovation. Then the ongoing COVID-19 global health pandemic struck in December 2019, forcing the need for digitization of business activities and remote operations, which was considered a “nice to have” to immediately become a “critical to have” to survive in the ever increasingly uncertain business environment. This paper identifies the technologies, evaluates disruptive software platforms, and strategies needed for creating and managing small business innovation and highlighting the complexity of that process and the context within which this process takes place. We integrate this discussion alongside a summary of the articles included in the Special Issue. The current realities show that technologies that enable social business creation, customer relationship management systems, new communications channels, virtual reality technologies for remote operations, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are crucial to lowering the costs of doing business. Big data and predictive and visual analytics are critical enablers to aiding complex business decisions in the current challenging business climate.

Purpose: This study explored moderating effects of employee generations on factors related to employee retention and motivation in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed a survey instrument and collected the survey data via Amazon Mechanical Turk. After filtering out bad responses, the authors ended up with 489 sample cases for this study. The authors used structural equation modeling for data analysis. Findings: Evidence showed that only transformational leadership was significantly related to retention of Generation X employees and only work–life balance had a significant relationship with intrinsic motivation. For Generation Y employees, transformational leadership was the only factor affecting their retention while both transformational leadership and autonomy showed significant impacts on their intrinsic motivation. Generation Z employees reported that only transformation leadership affected their retention while transformational leadership, corporate social responsibility and autonomy were significantly related to their intrinsic motivation in the workplace. All three generations showed statistical significance between intrinsic motivation and employee retention. Practical implications: This study could help business practitioners increase employees' work motivation and retention. Originality/value: First, our results revealed interesting similarities and differences between generations in terms of the factors that affected employees' retention and motivation. Second, this study proved that employees' generation affects the impacts of transformational leadership, CSR, autonomy, WLB and technology on their motivation and retention in the workplace. Third, the results of our study also showed that employees of different generations are intrinsically motivated by different factors, proving the importance of considering generational differences in motivation literature.

Purpose: Mobile loafing, or non-work-related mobile computing, is deviant workplace behavior that can reduce productivity and increase cybersecurity risks. To thwart mobile loafing, organizations often adopt formal controls that encompass rules and policies. These formal controls can serve as a phase-shifting event. Phase shifting is a process where individuals reevaluate and revise their perceptions of the regulation of deviant behaviors. Despite the importance of understanding this process, little research has examined the announcement of formal controls as an impetus for phase shifting. The primary objectives of this study were to induce a phase-shifting perception in an organizational setting and explore its determinants and moderating role in the context of mobile loafing.Design/methodology/approach: The authors proposed and tested a model using two-wave data collected from 231 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. To test the research hypotheses, they used covariance-based structural equation modeling and logistic regression.Findings: The authors found that peer's mobile loafing and neutralization positively influence mobile-loafing intention before and after the announcement of formal controls. This research also shows that the higher an employee's neutralization, the likelier they perceive the announcement of formal controls as phase shifting. Also, the authors found that the moderating effect of phase-shifting perceptions functions in such a way that the relationship between T1 and T2 mobile-loafing intention is weaker when employees perceive the announcement of formal controls as a phase-shifting event.Practical implications: The authors’ results provide managers with useful insights into effectively using formal controls to mitigate employees' deviant behavior. To effectively use formal controls, managers should articulate formal controls that can trigger employees to revise their perceptions of counterproductive workplace behavior policies.Originality/value: This study is one of the first in information systems research to empirically examine the announcement of formal controls as a phase-shifting event and explore its antecedents and moderating role in the context of deviant workplace behavior in general and mobile loafing in particular.