Background: During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, social media platforms have become active sites for the dissemination of conspiracy theories that provide alternative explanations of the cause of the pandemic, such as secret plots by powerful and malicious groups. However, the association of individuals’ beliefs in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 with mental health and well-being issues has not been investigated. This association creates an assessable channel to identify and provide assistance to people with mental health and well-being issues during the pandemic. Objective: Our aim was to provide the first evidence that belief in conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is a predictor of the mental health and well-being of health care workers. Methods: We conducted a survey of 252 health care workers in Ecuador from April 10 to May 2, 2020. We analyzed the data regarding distress and anxiety caseness with logistic regression and the data regarding life and job satisfaction with linear regression. Results: Among the 252 sampled health care workers in Ecuador, 61 (24.2%) believed that the virus was developed intentionally in a lab; 82 (32.5%) experienced psychological distress, and 71 (28.2%) had anxiety disorder. Compared to health care workers who were not sure where the virus originated, those who believed the virus was developed intentionally in a lab were more likely to report psychological distress and anxiety disorder and to have lower levels of job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Conclusions: This paper identifies belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories as an important predictor of distress, anxiety, and job and life satisfaction among health care workers. This finding will enable mental health services to better target and provide help to mentally vulnerable health care workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This study highlights a theoretical dilemma about the mixed implications of a firm’s R&D alliance network for its innovation performance. That is, knowledge sharing among R&D alliance partners can both benefit the focal firm with access to external knowledge and skill sets and expose it to potential risks of knowledge leakage and misappropriation, thus both advancing and hampering the focal firm’s innovation performance. Drawing on the network pluralism perspective, we address this dilemma by highlighting the interplay between the network embeddedness forces exerted by a firm’s R&D alliance network and other networks the focal firm participates in. Specifically, we find that a strong industrial network built upon the coalition and associations among peer firms in the focal firm’s industry can intensify the nonmonotonic (inverted U-shaped) effect of an R&D alliance network on the firm’s innovation performance, while the firm’s strong political connections with governments can weaken the effect of an R&D alliance network. In addition, such interplay between different networks tends to be strengthened by the focal firm’s technological capability.

Collaborating with a partner in a distant area is widely endorsed in practice as a means for inspiring novel innovations. However, empirical evidence also reports significant innovation efficiency challenges when working with distant partners due to differences in technical knowledge domain differences. In this study, we conducted a multi-method approach by using a case study of 30 interviews to develop three information technology (IT)-enabled inter-firm knowledge capabilities and testing the research model with field survey data from 258 firms. The findings of this research confirm our hypotheses that IT-enabled inter-firm knowledge exploration capability and IT-enabled inter-firm knowledge exploitation capability can help embrace the benefits of product effectiveness while IT-enabled social integration capability surmount process efficiency challenges inherent in collaboration with distant partners. This study adds a much-needed perspective to the IT and innovation literature and offers practical suggestions for firm managers to mindfully design and deploy IT resources in collaborative innovation projects.