In many developed economies, changing demographics and economic conditions have given rise to increasingly competitive labour markets, where competition for good employees is strong. Consequently, strategic investments
in attracting suitably qualified and skilled employees are recommended. One such strategy is employer branding. Employer branding in the context of recruitment is the package of psychological, economic, and functional benefits
that potential employees associate with employment with a particular company. Knowledge of these perceptions can help organisations to create an attractive and competitive employer brand. Utilising information economics and signalling theory, we examine the nature and consequences of employer branding. Depth interviews reveal that job seekers evaluate: the attractiveness of employers based on any previous direct work experiences with the employer or in the sector; the clarity, credibility, and consistency of the potential employers’ brand signals; perceptions of the employers’ brand investments; and perceptions of the employers’ product or service brand portfolio.

Employer branding : strategic implications for staffrecruitment

This present study aims to investigate factors that impact behavioural intention of university students on e-learning use during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online questionnaire was utilised to gather data from 109 students enrolled in one of the universities in Indonesia. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was the primary framework employed for analysis, in which system quality and e-learning experience were included as external constructs to seek out a much better model to improve the understanding of students' intention to adopt e-learning. An extended TAM model was developed and tested in this study. The model consists of six constructs: system quality, e-learning experience, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward use, and behavioural intention. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and SMART PLS 3.0 software were applied for data analysis. The findings informed that the proposed model has been succefully explained factors university students use of e-learning during the pandemic in Indonesia. It suggested that attitude toward e-learning use was the most prominent construct to predict university students' behavioural intention to use e-learning during the pandemic. Finally, this study offers recommendations for future research and practices.

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Examining university students' behavioural intention to use e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: An extended TAM model.

Blended Learning and Online Tutoring: Planning Learner Support and Activity Design

The pandemic and subsequent ‘lockdowns’ dramatically changed the educational landscape of higher education institutions. Before-COVID-19, traditional universities had choices in pedagogical practice, which included a variety of teaching delivery modes. Overnight, a single mode of delivery became the only option for traditional higher education institutions. All services migrated to digital platforms, leading to a period of “emergency eLearning”. The full impact of this sudden shift to digital platforms on all cohorts of students is still unclear. A measure of disruption to the normal student learning experience, especially for those attending traditional universities, was inevitable. Moreover, this disruption was varied depending on the University’s country and the country’s lockdown logistics. This international, comparative, quantitative research project investigated and explored higher education students’ perceptions of emergency eLearning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experiences of students at universities in three countries were evaluated in terms of four dimensions: (1) home learning environment, (2) engagement, (3) participation preference, and (4) impact on learning skills. The research revealed significant differences between the participating universities students’ experiences. The most important differences were in the ‘home learning environment’, followed by ‘engagement’ and the perception of ‘impact on learning skills’. The differences in the ‘home learning environment’ can be attributed to the differing economic and digital development of the surveyed countries: South Africa, Wales, and Hungary. Finally, different cultural backgrounds suggest a noticeable difference in student engagement, participation, and learning skills.

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Higher Education Students’ Perceptions of Online Learning during COVID-19—A Comparative Study

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and pursuant to the governments' order of citizens remaining at home, several countries were required to transition from face-to-face instruction to an online model to provide higher education to their students. While factors affecting the use of online learning are diverse and have been studied by models of use and acceptance of technology, this cross-sectional study explores the factors unique to the current emergency situation that influence students' use and acceptance of emergency online learning. Moreover, it proposes a model to predict a student's cognitive engagement in Mexico, Peru, Turkey, and the USA. This is a quantitative study with an exploratory and descriptive scope and cross-sectional design. Data was collected from 1009 students from the four countries, who completed surveys anonymously. The factors analyzed were attitude, affect, and motivation, perceived behavioral control (ease of use, self-efficacy, and accessibility), and cognitive engagement. The data was analyzed using descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis. The predictive model shows that students' attitude toward online learning impacts their cognitive engagement in Mexico, Peru, and the USA. Furthermore, self-efficacy is a significant moderator for cognitive engagement in all four countries. The model also shows that each country has different determinants for cognitive engagement. Understanding the factors that affect the use of emergency online learning is essential for the success and/or achievement of its maximum benefits in situations like a global pandemic. Limitations of this study have been identified as use of convenience sampling, and an inability to explore factors related to instruction and system attributes. Professors who did not teach online learning lacked knowledge about online educational strategies and used the technological resources that were immediately available to them. Therefore, research that explores the use of instructional strategies and the use of technological systems during emergency online learning is necessary. This study includes suggestions to incorporate open educational resources that use microlearning and emphasizes the importance of student self-efficacy; because it was predictor of cognitive engagement in all four countries. Faculty and higher education institutions can and should develop strategies to increase students' sense of self-efficacy.

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Comparison of students' use and acceptance of emergency online learning due to COVID-19 in the USA, Mexico, Peru, and Turkey.

A research about factors that lead students to choose online courses, as well as the acceptance of these courses, can provide very relevant information for higher education institutions’ decision makers to amend these offers to students’ interests and needs. An investigation through questionnaire was developed involving students who attended online post-graduate courses. It was intended to know which factors affect students' decision to opt for postgraduate online courses. A model, based on the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), was tested to find out what factors determine the intention to use online learning. The results shows that most respondents favour online courses and that their decision, when choosing this type of course, is mainly influenced by time management flexibility, avoiding going to school and the course curriculum interest. The test of the model, with structural equations, shows that attitude regarding online courses and perceived usefulness are factors that predict the intention to use. It was also concluded that the perceived ease of use induces a direct and indirect effect on the intention to use. The most significant results are consistent with published studies and can help the higher education institutions to define offer and communication strategies to reach a greater number of candidates for online learning.

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Factors that Influence the Adoption of Postgraduate Online Courses

In a globalization context, underlined by the speed of technological transformation and increasingly competitive markets, the perspective of human capital, as an asset of strategic importance, stands out in differentiating human resource practices. Under this reality, the employer branding (EB) concept gains more and more importance as a strategic tool to attract, retain, and involve human capital, given that this has become a source of competitive advantage to companies. Within this context, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between employer branding strategies implemented by organizations, as well as their impact on the employee’s affective commitment, evident in certain organizational cultures, which are sustained over time. The methodological framework applied to this study is quantitative, and the data collection was carried out with the application of an employer branding and an affective commitment questionnaire. To achieve a good representation of the active population, the sample of the quantitative study was composed of 172 individuals, working in the public and private sectors in Portugal, exercising different positions in the different sectors of activity. Results obtained with these techniques indicate a high level of affective organizational commitment (AOC) of employees in the organizations surveyed, suggesting that affective commitment develops when the individual becomes involved and identifies with the organization.

Strategic Talent Management: The Impact of Employer Branding on the Affective Commitment of Employees

The sales forecast is fundamental for the planning of the activity of the companies providing, important indicators for the support of the decisions of the managers. This study aims to explore the potential of time series prediction algorithms in an IT company. The forecast was based on the company's billing data for 192 months of activity. The analysis of the data was based on the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining approach and for the treatment; we used the Anaconda IPython and Pandas. We developed the prediction with three models using R: Exponential Smoothing (Holt-Winters), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and artificial neural networks (ANN). The comparison of the performance of each of the methods shows that the model based on artificial neural networks has a greater accuracy in the prediction. These results need deepening the study to broaden the universe of the studied contexts. However, the simplicity in the application of the artificial neural networks model makes possible its use in computer applications without specific knowledge, giving a reliable instrument that allows the supporting decision-making by managers.

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Sales forecast in an IT company using time series

This study integrates the relationship of business ethics in marketing campaigns and the importance of the repercussion on organizational performance with the aim of creating a guide of business ethics in marketing campaigns for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This guide allows SMEs to analyse their ethical dimension as well as to raise awareness and instill commercial ethics actions in the marketing campaign common practices in organisations. The qualitative methodology has been applied, and the proposed theoretical model uses a set of dimensions of ethics, commercial ethics, codes of conduct, marketing, and marketing campaigns to analyse the relationship of commercial ethics with marketing campaigns and its influence on organisations. The result demonstrates the influence of commercial ethics on advertising actions that, when applied positively, enable and promote the brand image, thus contributing to the organizational performance. KEywoRDS Commercial Ethics, Framework Marketing Campaigns, Organizational Performance

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Developing a Commercial Ethics Framework for Analysing Marketing Campaigns

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions with a face-to-face model have found themselves in the contingency of migrating to online learning. This study explores the perspective of all the lecturers at a Portuguese private higher education institution who were invited to participate, regardless of their research area, in this questionnaire. It aims to propose and test a conceptual model that combines attitudes, preferred activities, and technological experience with the sentiment about the impact of this experience on students’ learning process, on their teaching activity, and on the strategy of higher education institutions. An online questionnaire was conducted to 65 lecturers engaging in emergency online lecturing. The obtained results showed that lecturers reveal a positive attitude towards online lecturing, tend to prefer activities in which they feel most comfortable in face-to-face lecturing, and consider having technological experience useful for online activities. Lecturers have a positive sentiment about the impact of online learning on students’ learning, their faculty career, and the strategy of higher education institutions. The proposed conceptual model test shows that the model has well-fitting conditions. The results confirm the hypotheses formulated: namely, the predictive effect of attitude, preferred activities, and technological experience on sentiment. Faculty engagement in emergency online lecturing shows that the members are available to participate in the changing process, and the proposed conceptual model can be used to assess this readiness.

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Domingos Martinho

Papers

Factors that Influence the Adoption of Postgraduate Online Courses

Strategic Talent Management: The Impact of Employer Branding on the Affective Commitment of Employees

Sales forecast in an IT company using time series

Developing a Commercial Ethics Framework for Analysing Marketing Campaigns

Teaching Sentiment in Emergency Online Learning—A Conceptual Model