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887 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2019

Strategizing in small informal retailers in India: Home delivery as a strategic practice

Atul Arun Pathak and George Kandathil

Asia Pacific Journal of Management

Small informally organized family-owned grocery retailers—kiranas—are ubiquitous in India and have retained market dominance while facing increasing competition from large formally organized retailers (FORs). Yet, strategy literature has under-explored such informal businesses. We explore kiranas’ distinct strategic practices that give them competitive advantage over FORs, generating kiranas’ sustained market dominance. To explore kiranas’ informal strategizing, grounded theoretic analysis of our multi-year case study suggested the employment of strategy as practice (SAP) framework, enriched with the social exchange theory (SET) concepts of trust and reciprocity. We find that the kiranas’ sustained enactment of strategic practice such as free-of-charge home-delivery significantly depends on contextually rich, reciprocity-based social exchange relationships with customers which evolve through praxes involving continuous exchange of trust. The practice enactment and exchange relationships constitute strategy-practitioner’s emerging dual-identity, which in turn reinforces the practices, generating a self-reinforcing cycle of practice enhancement. Within this cyclic relationship, an inimitable enactment of a strategic practice can be a key source of competitive advantage for informally organized small retail retailers over large FORs. By linking two unconnected prominent approaches to understanding patterns of workplace interactions, namely SAP and SET, the study opens theoretical avenues for exploring strategizing of informal businesses.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Non-optimality of state by state monopoly pricing with demand uncertainty: An example

James Peck and Jeevant Rampal

Economics Letters

This paper considers a monopoly’s profit maximizing problem, where there is a continuum of consumers with unit demand, and valuations are given by one of two possible demand distributions/states. The firm’s problem is to maximize profits by choosing an optimal mechanism among direct revelation mechanisms that satisfy interim incentive compatibility and ex-post individual rationality. We show that setting the monopoly price in each demand state may not be optimal.

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Journal Articles | 2019

An examination of factors driving big 4 audit fee premiums: Evidence from India's audit market

Joshy Jacob, Naman Desai, and Sobhesh Kumar Agarwalla

Accounting Horizons

This study examines fee premiums earned by Big 4 auditors in India and identifies the primary reason for such fee premiums. There are three primary drivers of Big 4 fee premiums. Big 4 auditors charge a fee premium for their reputation, for providing a superior quality of audit, and for indemnifying losses for a company's stakeholders. Since the risk of auditor litigation in India is relatively low, Big 4 premiums in India would not be driven by the need for auditors to indemnify losses. The results indicate that Big 4 auditors earn significantly higher fees in India and also that their clients enjoy significantly higher earnings response coefficients compared to non-Big 4 clients. However, there is no difference in the quality of audit provided by Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors as measured by the magnitude of reported discretionary accruals.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Trust in humanitarian operations: a content analytic approach for an Indian NGO

Prakash Awasthy, K.V. Gopakumar, Sirish Kumar Gouda, and Tanushree Haldar

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH

Trust between partners, a key element enabling coordination across supply chains, has recently started gaining attention in humanitarian operations literature. Yet, empirical examination of this concept is scant. Borrowing from extant literature on trust within organisational behaviour stream, this paper aims to empirically verify trust formation types: companion, competence and commitment, in a disaster relief supply chain using primary and secondary data from an Indian Humanitarian relief organisation (HRO). Further, we identify variations in trust formation during disaster relief activities and developmental programmes, and between upstream and downstream partners of a humanitarian relief organisation. Based on the results of our content analysis, we contend that while companion based trust is significantly more prevalent during developmental programmes, competence based trust is important during both disaster periods and otherwise. We also find that there are significant differences in the trust formation between upstream and downstream partners and the HRO. This study has significant theoretical and practical implications on identifying the role of trust in humanitarian operations.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Can subordinate voice prevail with abusive supervision? A conceptual model using conservation of resources perspective

K.V. Gopakumar and Sweta Singh

Management Research Review

Purpose

Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explain why certain voice types prevail while other voice types are inhibited in the presence of abusive supervision.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper surveys extant literature on abusive supervision, employee voice and COR theory and provides propositions linking abusive supervision and types of voice behaviours.

Findings

The paper develops a conceptual model linking abusive supervision and three types of subordinate voice behaviours – prosocial, defensive and acquiescent voices. It identifies psychological distress as a mediator and locus of control as a moderator to this relationship.

Originality/value

This paper deepens our present understanding of abusive supervision and voice relationship by explaining why only certain voice types prevail with abusive supervision while others do not. While extant literature concluded abusive supervision only as an inhibitor of voice behaviours, the present study identifies how abusive supervision could both inhibit and motivate different voice behaviours. Further, it links abusive supervision to multiple voice types, diverting from extant literature linking abusive supervision to only constructive voice. Lastly, this study contributes to resource acquisition strategies within COR theory.

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Journal Articles | 2019

What drives human resource acquisition and retention in social enterprises? An empirical investigation in the healthcare industry in an emerging market

Aditya Moses and Amalesh Sharma

Journal of Business Research

Although healthcare is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world, it faces crucial shortages in human resource (HR) availability and retention. This challenge is worsened in social enterprises. In this research, we build on a multimethod and a multistudy approach. In the first study, using an exploratory qualitative study, we identify HR practices that influence HR acquisition and retention. Utilizing an institutional logics lens, we propose that market logic and community logic-driven HR practices influence a firm's ability to acquire and retain HR. In the second study, we test our hypotheses using primary data from 182 faith-based hospitals in India and a robust empirical model accounting for endogeneity. We find that while market logic-driven HR practices help with HR acquisition, community logic-driven HR practices help with HR retention. In the third study, through a simple field experiment, we showcase that, indeed, market and community logic-based HR practices are responsible for HR acquisition and retention.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India

Klaus Deininger, Hari K Nagarajan, and Sudhir K Singh

Journal of Comparative Economics

Despite recent advances, women trail men in political participation, especially in developing countries where the long-term economic benefits from empowering women politically have not been well-researched. We use data from 163 villages of 12 main Indian states to explore whether requiring that village leadership positions be held by women (political reservation) affected uptake of economic opportunities via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Reservation triggered increases in women's demand for work, program participation, and access to financial services that were sustained beyond the period of female political leadership. Enhanced female participation in program oversight, civic engagement, and electoral participation are plausible channels for such effects and political and economic empowerment seem to be complementary.

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Journal Articles | 2019

The Punjab National Bank scam: Ethics versus robust processes

Sundaravalli Narayanaswami, Kaushik Dora Hanumantu, and Vidula Worlikar

Journal of Public Affairs

With the rising incidents of corporate scams, it has become imperative to lift the corporate veil to unearth the reasons behind them. As a result, it is of paramount importance to examine the formation of the companies entering into the contract—the executives, directors, and top management. A large-scale scam hit the Punjab National Bank (PNB) in India recently with huge implications on its financial position and credibility. It is inferred through this work that violation of checks and balances led to the huge scam. Following this scam, several banks have initiated measures to prevent and early detect such manipulative practices. Banks have incorporated stringent verification of all stakeholders involved in any transaction and do not completely rely anymore on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications system. The Reserve Bank of India, as the apex governing body of all banking agencies in India, has also started taking measures to ensure that monitoring and control mechanisms are strong and robust. Finally, we present the way forward to prevent malpractices in the corporate world and the ethical implications in the society. Although any organization, especially, a public service organization does not allow any perpetrators into its systems, loopholes might exist that its internal or external stakeholders take advantage of. While emphasizing the needs for robust monitoring and audit processes to prevent violation by perpetrators, it is interesting to note that the same monitoring processes have brought out the scam to open for legal scrutiny, specifically at PNB.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Jati, local public goods and village governance: Private actions and public outcomes

Raghbendra Jha, Hari K Nagarajan, and Anirudh Tagat

Economic & Political Weekly

Whether voting along narrow parochial lines in socially and ethnically fragmented societies has measurable gains is explored. Using data from rural India, it is established that identity-based voting, driven by membership in social and informal networks, will lead to enhanced participation in welfare programmes, which in turn leads to increased consumption growth. Further, reducing agency costs does not necessarily remove the need for identity-based voting, and such voting behaviour is a means for engaging in the capture of public and private benefits by these groups.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Addressing the undergraduate internship challenge in developing countries:A “learning-by-doing” project-based online internship model

Vijaya Sherry Chand and Ketan S. Deshmukh

Education And Training

Purpose

The difficulties higher education institutions in developing countries face in finding adequate and relevant onsite student internship opportunities make a case for online internships. The purpose of this paper is to present an online internship model, developed over a two-year period, which challenged students to engage in learning-by-doing projects that addressed a key barrier in the implementation of ICT policies in public education, the paucity of audio-visual content in local languages.

Design/methodology/approach

The design of the model comprised the development of instructional videos by 340 interns, the evaluation of the videos by two interns and their testing by 31 interns through a field experiment using a between-subjects pre-test – post-test design in 54 schools. The process was repeated the following year with the field experiment replaced by the development of teaching manuals. The changes in reflective learning among 112 of the 119 interns who developed video content in this repeat round were assessed.

Findings

The field experiment found that the intern-developed videos improved Mathematics and Science scores among school students but not the attitudes to these subjects. Participation in online internships improved reflective learning.

Research limitations/implications

The evaluation of change in reflective learning is based on self-reported measures.

Practical implications

The online internship model presented in the paper can address concerns related to inadequate internship opportunities, while addressing gaps in public policy implementation by systems such as education, health and rural development.

Originality/value

The paper outlines the design of an online student internship model and a methodology for implementing it. The study indicates the feasibility of a low-cost, large-scale online model of internship.

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