Pune (Maharashtra) [India], Aug 26 (ANI/Digpu): On 25th August 2020, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune (SIBM Pune), and Swansea University United Kingdom jointly hosted an International webinar titled Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on information management research and practice: Transforming education, work, and life. The webinar was supported by the International Journal of Information Management and the UK Academy for Information Systems.

The webinar had 24 professors as speakers representing 20 universities across the globe. The professors were located in 10 countries while they addressed 500 plus participants who attended the webinar from 29 countries making it truly an international webinar. Along with the professors, an IAS officer, Mr Santosh Mishra, CEO of e-Governance agency of the government of Tamilnadu, India also addressed the participants. The webinar had an academic and research orientation and gave research ideas for students, faculty members and researchers across the globe.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to undergo significant transformation, rethinking key elements of their business processes and the use of technology to maintain operations whilst adhering to a changing landscape of guidelines and new procedures. This international webinar brought together a collective insight to many key issues and underlying complexities affecting organisations and society from COVID-19, through an information systems and technological perspective.

The experts' perspectives drawn from articles presented in a special issue of International Journal of Information Management (an article by Dwivedi et al., 2020 https://tinyurl.com/y37cswak ) offered a detailed discussion on key aspects of this important topic as well as perspectives on issues relating to online learning, digital strategy, artificial intelligence, information management, social interaction, cybersecurity, big data, blockchain, privacy, mobile technology and strategy through the lens of the current crisis and impact on these specific areas.

Professor Yogesh Dwivedi Professor of Digital Marketing and Innovation and Director of Emerging Markets Research Centre (EMaRC)Co-Director of Research School of Management, Swansea University, Bay Campus, UK and Prof. Dr Ramakrishnan Raman Director SIBM Pune and Dean Faculty of Management - Symbiosis International (Deemed University) were the chair for the webinar. Prof. Sandeep Bhattacharya from SIBM Pune was the anchor for the webinar and moderated the discussion.

Expert professors across the globe perspectives offer insights to the range of topics, identifying key issues and recommendations for theory and practice. The eclectic panel of speakers for the webinar included - Dr Deborah Bunker, Professor, The University of Sydney Business School, Australia; Dr Noel Carroll, Lecturer in Business Information Systems, NUI Galway, Ireland; Dr Kieran Conboy, Professor in Business Information Systems, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland; Dr IoannaConstantiou, Professor, Department of Digitalization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Dr Crispin Coombs, Reader in IS and Head of the IMAG, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK; Dr Robert Davison, Professor of Information Systems City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Dr Rahul De Professor Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence IIM Bangalore, India.

Apart from these, the other speakers were Dr Rameshwar Dubey, Reader-Operations Management, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK; Dr John S. Edwards, Professor of Knowledge Management, Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK; Dr Robert A. Fahey, Research Associate, Waseda Institute of Political Economy (WINPEC), Waseda University Tokyo, Japan; Dr Gordon Fletcher, Director of the Business 4.0 Directorate, Salford University, UK; Dr Marie Griffiths, Reader in Digital Technologies, Salford University, UK; Dr NettaIivari, INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu, Finland; Dr. Marijn Janssen, Professor of ICTGovernance, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; Dr Banita Lal, Senior Lecturer in Responsible Management, University of Bradford, UK; Mr. Santosh K Misra Senior officer of Indian Administrative Service and Commissioner of e-Governance and CEO of e-Governance Agency of Government of Tamil Nadu, India; Dr Thanos Papadopoulos Professor of Management, Information Systemsat Kent Business School, University of Kent, UK; Dr SavvasPapagiannidis, David Goldman Prof of InnovationEnterprise, Newcastle University, UK ; Dr Nripendra P. Rana, Professor in Digital Marketing, University of Bradford, UK; Dr H. Raghav Rao, ATT Distinguished , Chair in Infrastructure Assurance and Security at The University of Texas at San Antonio College of Business USA ; Dr Sujeet K Sharma, Professor IIM Trichirappalli, India; Dr. Nitin Upadhyay, Associate Professor (IT and POM), Goa Institute of Management, India and Dr Viswanath Venkatesh, Distinguished Professor and Billingsley Chair at the University of Arkansas, USA. The webinar was a knowledge feast for the participants and gave a lot of research ideas that could be taken by several graduate management students.

Mr Hem Shah, the senior student coordinator of Information Systems and Media Relation Team (iSMART) student council of SIBM Pune and his team gave the online publicity for the event and also updated twitter with relevant details during the event. The event coordination was ably done by the student president of SIBM Pune, Bhuvan Deepak Chadda and the tech aspects were handled by Senior Network Administrator, Rajesh Bagewadi, SIBM Pune.

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