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887 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2018

New asset liability management model with decision support system for life insurance companies: interface design issues for database and mathematical models

Goutam Dutta, Harish V. Rao, and Sankarshan Basu

International Journal of Revenue Management

We introduce a new asset liability management (ALM) model based on decision support system (DSS) for a life insurance firm. The DSS is based on multi-stage stochastic linear programming (SLP) with recourse for strategic planning. The model can be used with minimal knowledge of management sciences. The model maximises the expected value of total reserve (policy holders' reserve and shareholders' reserve) at the end of the time period of planning with constraints both on the asset and the liability side of the firm's balance sheet. We discuss issues related to DSS interface design, one to one correspondences between the SLP model and the database and the difficulty in multi stage DSS compared to two stage DSS. We also compare and contrast the similarities and differences with our earlier work on SLP based DSS for process industries.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Promoting health in rural India: Enhancing job performance of health activists

Jatin Pandey, Manjari Singh, Biju Varkkey, and Dileep Mavalankar

Academy of Management Proceedings

The health of people in a nation is a potential indicator of its development. Over and above that, the job performance of people involved in the delivery and facilitation of health care services within a nation reflects the actual health conditions in it. In developing countries, where a large chunk of the population lives in rural areas, the job performance of grass-roots health care workers gains significant importance in order to ensure effective and efficient delivery of health care services to the masses and marginalized communities. The present study takes the case of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) in difficult rural areas of India to identify factors that affect their job performance and suggests interventions through which it could be enhanced. Fifty-five ASHAs were interviewed and five focused group discussions (FGDs) were conducted. Additionally, triangulation was done by interviewing other stakeholders, while studying relevant documents. Through content analysis of these interviews and documents, this study identifies the demands, resources and stressors that affect the job performance of these important intermediaries in the health care supply chain (in the Indian context). The study also suggests policy-level decisions that could help in enhancing job performance of ASHAs by managing demands, increasing resources and reducing stressors.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Emotional labour of rural women in difficult geographies of an emerging economy: Narratives of community healthcare workers of India

Jatin Pandey, Manjari Singh, and Shrihari Suresh Sohani

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion

This study attempts to find the existence, execution and outcome of emotional labour in the work of community healthcare workers. Through a ten-month field study comprising in-depth interviews with 26 accredited social health workers (ASHAs), we found that their work requires emotional labour. Our study shows that they use 'attached approach', which is similar to deep acting, and 'detached approach', which is similar to surface acting, to perform emotional labour. We also found that surface acting resulted in minimal negative effect in case of negative situation and in well-being due to attenuation of work benefits in case of positive situation at the workplace. Deep acting in a positive situation led to emotional permeability between work and personal life, whereas in the event of a negative situation, it led to stress. Furthermore, deep acting decreases their effectiveness and efficiency due to associated stress that could have detrimental effects on the beneficiaries of healthcare.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Worth the wait? How restaurant waiting time influences customer Behaviour and revenue

Jelle De Vries, Debjit Roy, and Rene De Koster

Journal of Operations management

In many service industries, customers have to wait for service. When customers have a choice, this waiting may influence their service experience, sojourn time, and ultimately spending, reneging, and return behavior. Not much is known however, about the system-wide impact of waiting on customer behavior and resulting revenue. In this paper, we empirically investigate this by analyzing data obtained from 94,404 customers visiting a popular Indian restaurant during a 12 month period. The results show that a longer waiting time relates to reneging behavior, a longer time until a customer returns, and a shorter dining duration. To find out the impact of the consequences of waiting time, we use the empirical findings and data collected in a simulation experiment. This experiment shows that, without waiting, the total revenue generated by the restaurant would increase by nearly 15% compared to the current situation. Stimulating customers to reserve could enable restaurants to reap part of this benefit. Furthermore, the results of simulation experiments suggest that, within the boundaries of the current capacity, revenue could be increased by a maximum of 7.5% if more flexible rules were used to allocate customers to tables. Alternatively, by increasing the existing seating capacity by 20%, revenue could be boosted by 7.7% without the need to attract additional customers. Our findings extend the knowledge on the consequences of customer waiting, and enable service providers to better understand the financial and operational impact of waiting-related decisions in service settings.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Farmer producer organizations as farmer collectives: A case study from India

Nalini Bikkina, Rama Mohana R. Turaga, and Vaibhav Bhamoriya

Development Policy Review

Small and marginal farmers in India have been vulnerable to risks in agricultural production. Several organizational prototypes are emerging to integrate them into the value chain with the objectives of enhancing incomes and reduction in transaction costs. One such alternative is Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). We explore the potential of FPOs as collective institutions through a case study of Avirat, one of the first FPOs in Gujarat. Our analysis suggests that FPOs have the potential to provide benefits through effective collective action. The main challenge, however, is to raise sufficient capital that can maximize these benefits. We discuss the implications of our findings to policy

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Journal Articles | 2018

Real time location prediction with taxi-GPS data streams

Arnab Kumar Laha and Sayan Putatunda

Transporation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies

The prediction of the destination location at the time of pickup is an important problem with potential for substantial impact on the efficiency of a GPS enabled taxi service. While this problem has been explored earlier in the batch data set-up, we propose in this paper new solutions in the streaming data set-up. We examine four incremental learning methods using a Damped window model namely, Multivariate multiple regression, spherical-spherical regression, Randomized spherical K-NN regression and an Ensemble of these methods for their effectiveness in solving the destination prediction problem. The performance of these methods on several large datasets are evaluated using suitably chosen metrics and they were also compared with some other existing methods. The Multivariate multiple regression method and the Ensemble of the three methods are found to be the two best performers. The next pickup location problem is also considered and the aforementioned methods are examined for their suitability using real world datasets. As in the case of destination prediction problem, here also we find that the Multivariate multiple regression method and the Ensemble of the three methods gives better performance than the rest.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Earnings management strategies during financial distress

Neerav Nagar and Kaustav Sen

IUP Journal of Accounting Research & Audit Practices

We examine whether financial distress and its severity have a role to play in managers' decisions with respect to the choice of earnings management strategies. Our results suggests that firms in initial stages of distress engage in real earnings management through a reduction in the spending on selling, general and administrative expenses, and engage in classification shifting to increase profitability and liquidity. When distress becomes severe, firms cut-back on production, engage in income-increasing accruals management, and increase their spending on selling, general and administrative expenses. Initial under-spending on selling, general and administrative expenses is opportunistic with an intention to show improved performance. In extreme distress, increase on such spending is a sound economic decision. Our findings provide insights into how managers of distressed firms trade-off between liquidity, profitability and solvency in both short-run and long-run.
JEL Codes: M41; G33.

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Journal Articles | 2018

Dispersion in macroeconomic volatility between the core and periphery of the international trade network

Anindya S. Chakrabarti

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

At the country level, macroeconomic volatility tends to correlate with trade openness although the direction of correlation is not stable across samples. Here I consider trade networks as sum of all pairwise trade linkages to emphasize that different linkages contribute differently to the transmission or mitigation of shocks, and show that across the network volatility is inversely related to centrality, a summary measure of strength of the linkages specific to a country. I study a multi-country, multi-sector trade model
subject to idiosyncratic productivity and liquidity shocks, and characterize volatility as an explicit function of centrality, diversification and the Herfindahl of the trade network in equilibrium. With sufficient skewness in trade linkages across countries, similar shocks generate different levels of repercussions across the network. The conventional effect of diversification holds true that countries with better diversified portfolio fluctuate less compared. Centrality directly contributes to better aggregation of shocks. Combined effect of these two channels dominates the opposite effect that a more central country is also more exposed to shocks. The model calibrated to the E.U. generates and closely replicates the negative relationship between centrality and volatility. The
theoretical model is then extended to capture stochasticity and sparsity in the trade networks.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Identifying a typology of organizational transformations in India

Supriya Sharma and Pradyumana W. Khokle

International Journal of Organizational Analysis

Purpose

This paper aims to develop a comprehensive typology of organizational transformations that is based on both content and process characteristics of transformations, and it is relevant to organizations in India.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a review of literature, 17 different features/elements of organizational transformations were identified and organized into three dimensions – object, magnitude and speed of transformation – to develop a foundational framework of transformations. Through a comprehensive search of publicly available information, 52 cases of organizational transformations between 1991 and 2011 were identified. A case report for each transformation was then prepared and examined to identify elements of each transformation by referring to the foundational framework. Transformations were then classified into different types using cluster analysis, with elements as variables and cases as objects to be clustered.

Findings

Nine distinct types of transformations were found. They were named quickfixer, extender, healer, evolver, peripheral, recurrent, methodical, internal and cultivator based on each case’s characteristics as captured in case reports.

Originality/value

This study brings together transformation characteristics that have been largely considered distinct in literature to develop a comprehensive typology that depicts the complexity of organizational transformations. This is also one of the first studies to develop a typology of transformations that is based on and thus relevant to organizations in India.

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Journal Articles | 2017

This place is not the same anymore; temps are coming in

Saikat Chakraborty

Business Review India

As organisations increasingly rely on temporary work arrangements, there is a significant rise in the proportion of workers in part-time, contractual, fixed tenure, and other such labour engagements. Due to the difference between the employment relationships of temporary and permanent workers, corporations often design separate control mechanisms for these two worker groups. This paper argues that organisational control of workers extensively shapes their organisational communication. Communication as constitutive of organisation (CCO) research says that the interaction between members and objects plays a vital role in constructing ‘communication yielding organising.’ The emergent organisation rests on the negotiations of conversations and texts which carry the ongoing organisational communication. Workplaces in which the workforce composition is shifting from permanent workers to a mixture of permanent and temporary workers gradually realise pertinent changes in their conversations and texts, which as carriers of organisational communication constitutes how the organisation emerges as well.

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IIMA