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887 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2017

Professionalizing a religio-centric firm through workplace learning

Anamika Sinha, Biju Varkkey, Rajesh Kikani, and Priyanka Dave

Vikalpa

On a Monday morning, after a three-week holiday in Brazil, Rakesh Patel, Chairman of Steel Tubes and Pipes Ltd (STPL), was consolidating his thoughts on the tasks ahead. He was back to work after his first family holiday in many years. Experiencing lovely beaches, football fever, and a leisurely cruise in the Amazon basin had rejuvenated the family. He too was recharged, and ready to take his medium-sized company into, as they say, the next orbit.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Convergence or Divergence: The impact of globalization on employee relations in India and China

Jatinder Kumar Jha and Biju Varkkey

International Journal of Employment Studies

This paper explores the underlying principles of employee relations and the pattern of their evolution in India and China, in the context of globalisation. Globalisation has deeply influenced the way economies function and altered the national patterns of employee relations. Using evidences from available extant literature, we mapped the approaches taken by both India and China to highlight the impact of globalisation on employee relations and found that competition, followed by globalisation, and changes in the trade union structures, have prompted the introduction of the 'human' element to employee relations practices, particularly at the enterprise level; besides, a lucid convergence in employee relations patterns is also witnessed, alongside some divergences in the approaches. The points of convergence include the introduction of the human element in employee relations, labour flexibility, reduction in union membership and increased focus on individual employment contracts. Divergence is primarily witnessed in the degree of involvement of trade unions and governments in employee relations. The differences in patterns observed between the countries can be attributed to the unique institutional factors of each country.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Contribution of HR systems in development of ethical climate at workplace: A case study

Jatinder Kumar Jha, Biju Varkkey, Praveen Agrawal, and Narendra Singh

South Asian Journal of Human Resource Management

This article elucidates the relationship between HR systems and ethical climate at workplace with primary focus on the procedure adopted for development of ethical climate, using case study of an Indian power distribution company (Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited [TPDDL]). The study categorizes TPDDL’s endeavours undertaken into two categories, explicit and implicit initiatives. Explicit ways of promoting ethics include ethics trainings, seminars on ethics, rewards and punishment policy, and mechanism of reporting ethical concerns/issues (ethics portal, whistle blower policy, IVRS, etc.). Implicit ways of creating ethical climate include HR practices, namely selective selection, training for developing interpersonal and technical skills, fair performance appraisal system and various engagement initiatives. The support and guidance of the senior management and line managers ensured successful execution of both initiatives. Results from the study suggest, over the period of time, the untiring efforts of various actors that saw the development of an ethical climate.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Professionalizing religious family-owned organizations: An examination of human resource challenges

Anamika Sinha, Jatin Pandey, and Biju Varkkey

South Asian Journal of Management

Transformation of the Human Resource (HR) function from the traditional to a modern and professional one continues to be a challenge for most family-owned organizations. This paper discusses the traditional HR practices followed in an Indian religious family-owned organization, the actions taken during the transformation process of professionalizing the firm and the challenges faced by the newly recruited HR head while executing this process, along with the change management schema adopted for professionalization. During this process, deeply-rooted traditions prevalent in the firm had to be a balanced with a need for modernization. A steady approach with small steps at a time-rather than a radical transformation at a fast pace-was adopted for the change process. The intention of the professionalization process was not to harm or do away with the inherent good people-management practices that already existed but build upon them. At the same time, practices and styles had to be changed, and concerns of employees addressed. The paper also brings forth the impact of owner/promoter's religious beliefs on the organizational and also opens avenues for future research on the relatively unexplored domains of religion and management. We discuss a three-pronged plan comprising of overall strategy development, tuning the HR systems to meet transformation goals and building a new professional culture. The paper adds to the existing theory and practice by proposing the secularization matrix for managing transformation in such organizations.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Emergence of distributed coordination in Kolkata Paise Restaurant problem with finite information

Diptesh Ghosh and Anindya S. Chakrabarti

Physica: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

In this paper, we study a large-scale distributed coordination problem and propose efficient adaptive strategies to solve the problem. The basic problem is to allocate finite number of resources to individual agents in the absence of a central planner such that there is as little congestion as possible and the fraction of unutilized resources is reduced as far as possible. In the absence of a central planner and global information, agents can employ adaptive strategies that uses only a finite knowledge about the competitors. In this paper, we show that a combination of finite information sets and reinforcement learning can increase the utilization fraction of resources substantially.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Transnational Indian business in the twentieth century

Chinmay Tumbe

Business History Review

This article argues that migration and investment from India moved in tandem to chart the evolution of transnational Indian business in the twentieth century, first toward Southeast Asia and Africa and later toward the United States, Europe, and West Asia. With a focus on the banking and diamond sectors, the overseas investment project of the Aditya Birla Group, and the transnational linkages of India's one hundred richest business leaders, the article locates important events, policies, and actors before economic liberalization in 1991 that laid the foundation for subsequent globalization of Indian firms.

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Journal Articles | 2017

A stochastic model for the throughput analysis of passing dual yard cranes

Suruchika Saini, Debjit Roy, and Rene De Koster

Computers & Operations Research

New container terminal technologies such as passing dual yard cranes per stack promise increase in stacking throughput capacity. However, dual yard cranes can interfere, which reduces the cranes’ throughput capacity. Using crane operational protocols, we develop a stochastic model for two passing dual yard cranes and obtain closed-form expressions for the crane throughput capacity with interference delays. We then develop an approximate model to estimate the expected throughput times for both balanced and unbalanced stack configuration. A detailed discrete-event simulation is built to validate the analytical model. We show that interference effects between the cranes can reduce the crane throughput capacity by an average of 35% and interference delays increase with an increase in the number of bays in the stack. We use the model to develop operational insights.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Determinants of safe and productive truck driving: empirical evidence from long-haul cargo transport.

Jelle de Vries, Rene De Koster, Serge Rijsdijk, and Debjit Roy

Transportation Research Part E-Logistics and Transportation Review,

Using GPS data of 370 long-haul trips in India, survey data of 49 truck drivers, and ERP data, this study examines the role of driver personality characteristics in predicting risky and productive driving. The results show that more conscientious drivers display more risky driving behavior. More extravert drivers are less productive, whereas driver safety consciousness positively relates to productivity. These results can serve as a starting point for further studies into how long-haul transport companies may use individual truck driver characteristics in their training and selection procedures to meet operational safety and productivity objectives.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Optimal stack layout in a sea container terminal with automated lifting vehicles

Akash Gupta, Debjit Roy, Rene de Koster, and Sampanna Parhi

International Journal of Production Research

Container terminal performance is largely determined by its design decisions, which include the number and type of quay cranes, stack cranes, transport vehicles, vehicle travel path and stack layout. We investigate the orientation of the stack layout (parallel or perpendicular to the quayside) on the throughput time performance of the terminals. Previous studies in this area typically use deterministic optimisation, and a few studies use probabilistic travel times and simulation to analyse the effect of stack layout on terminal throughput times. In this research, we capture the stochasticity with an integrated queuing network modelling approach to analyse the performance of container terminals with parallel stack layout using automated lifting vehicles. Using this analytical model, we investigate 1008 parallel stack layout configurations on throughput times and determine the optimal stack layout configuration. We find that, assuming an identical width of the internal transport area, container terminals with parallel stack layout perform better (from 4–12% in terms of container throughput times) than terminals with a perpendicular stack layout.

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Journal Articles | 2017

A Multi-tier linking approach to analyze performance of autonomous vehicle-based storage and retrieval systems

Debjit Roy, Ananth Krishnamurthy, Sunderesh S. Heragu, and Charles Malmborg

Computers & Operations Research

To improve operational flexibility, throughput capacity, and responsiveness in order fulfillment operations, several distribution centers are implementing autonomous vehicle-based storage and retrieval system (AVS/RS) in their high-density storage areas. In such systems, vehicles are self-powered to travel in horizontal directions (x- and y- axes), and use lifts or conveyors for vertical motion (z-axis). In this research, we propose a multi-tier queuing modeling framework for the performance analysis of such vehicle-based warehouse systems. We develop an embedded Markov chain based analysis approach to estimate the first and second moment of inter-departure times from the load-dependent station within a semi-open queuing network. The linking solution approach uses traffic process approximations to analyze the performance of sub-models corresponding to individual tiers (semi-open queues) and the vertical transfer units (open queues). These sub-models are linked to form an integrated queuing network model, which is solved using an iterative algorithm. Performance estimates such as expected transaction cycle times and resource (vehicle and vertical transfer unit) utilization are determined using this algorithm, and can be used to evaluate a variety of design configurations during the conceptualization phase.

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