Exploring the managerial challenge encountered by university of Balamand professors due to the sudden shift of telecommuting

Abstract

The entrance of Covid-19 changed how the world is functioning. Some businesses fell apart, some grew bigger and some used alternative ways to maintain its presence. With the rapid growth in the number of Corona Virus cases and with the simultaneous development in technology, the use of telecommuting as a method to maintain the work life cycle, was considered an opportunity. Businesses from diverse industries reached out to this method to help in achieving two major objectives. First and the most important is to get the work done in other words maintaining the work lifecycle and second to limit the number of Covid-19 infected cases in the business. An industry that was staring to use this method to achieve its purpose is the higher education industry. Most universities reached out for the telecommuting method in which professors changed their learning methods to encourage students to remain intrigued for knowledge. The use of telecommuting differed throughout counties. Taking the case of Lebanon for this research paper, proved that with all the difficulties that the country is facing, professors didn’t lose hope in achieving the teaching objectives. Thus, with this sudden shift in work practices and work environment, exploring professors’ behaviors and attitudes is the purpose of this study. In this paper, a group of professors from the University of Balamand were questioned with semi structure interviews. Through the reliable context that was presented by the interviews, it was proven that with living in a developed country that is facing poor infrastructure and massive technological issues, the use of the internet somehow through telecommuting allowed the professors to adapt to this new form of teaching. Nevertheless, the challenges that the university instructors faced were more puzzling than the opportunities they gained. Therefore, with overcoming these challenges, the attitudes and behaviors of the professors had to get adapted in diverse forms.