Home Menu
icon-menu-close.svg

Faculty & Research

Faculty & Research

Research Productive

Show result

Clear
Search Query :
Area :
Search Query :
3892 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2026

Product Availability, Buying Behavior, and Marketing Action: Insights From a Bottom of the Pyramid Marketplace

Shehzala, Vidya Vemireddy, Anand Kumar Jaiswal

It is argued that improving access to products and services can increase the material well-being of BoP consumers. However, little is known about the kind of products available or consumed at the BoP, particularly if they are essential or non-essential, and the implications of their consumption for a consumer segment with limited resources. BoP ventures have also been criticized for creating economic value for the firm without truly creating social value for BoP consumers, but extant literature includes anecdotal or qualitative evidence, and there is a need for quantitative data on products available and consumed at the retail store level in a BoP marketplace. We address these questions in the present study. Using a mixed-methods research design combining store-level quantitative purchase data (n = 170 individuals over 1 month) with qualitative interviews, we examine product availability and consumption in a BoP marketplace. We find that a majority of available and consumed products are non-essential, with consumption driven by exposure to advertisements, celebrity appeals, lower entry prices and strong distribution. These findings suggest that while marketing actions increase access and consumption, the dominance of non-essential goods limits their potential for meaningful social value creation. We further offer recommendations on how organizations can enhance value creation for the BoP through product, pricing, promotional and distribution strategies

Go to link
Read More

Working Papers | 2026

Trade-Dress Law in India

M P Ram Mohan, Pratishtha Agarwal

The increased emphasis on visual presentation and brand experience has elevated trade-dress from a peripheral concern to a central feature of trademark protection. Indian trade-dress protection is currently spread across multiple intellectual property legal regime with special emphasis through the passing-off law under the trademarks Act 1999. Despite commercial importance of trade-dress law, and without explicit statutory definition of what constitutes trade-dress, its protection is shaped almost entirely through a patchwork of judicial interpretation across the Supreme Court and the High Courts. The present study undertakes a mapping and comparative analysis of trade-dress jurisprudence across the Supreme Court of India and four major High Courts; Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. The analysis reveals a fragmented landscape highlighting divergent judicial approaches to distinctiveness, consumer perception, functionality and evidentiary thresholds, The present study further identifies persistent doctrinal tensions from the conflation of trade-dress with copyright and design law in the Indian context. The authors argue for a more disciplined and coherent framework for trade-dress protection in India.

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2026

Credit Reallocation and Exporting: Evaluating the IBC Reforms in India

Padmabati Nayak

This paper studies whether strengthening creditor rights improves the allocation of capital toward productive exporting firms. I examine India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) of 2016, which introduced a time-bound insolvency resolution framework and strengthened creditor control. Using firm-level data from CMIE Prowess and a difference-in-differences design, I test whether the reform relaxed financing constraints for firms with high marginal returns to capital (MRPK). I find that following the IBC, high-MRPK exporting firms experience a significant increase in export intensity, investment, and long-term domestic borrowing relative to other firms. In contrast, foreign borrowing remains unchanged, suggesting that the reform primarily improved access to domestic credit markets. The findings imply that

stronger insolvency institutions can improve allocative efficiency by channeling capital toward productive but financially constrained firms. More broadly, the paper highlights the  role of creditor rights in shaping export performance and resource allocation in emerging economies.

View File
Read More

Working Papers | 2026

Creditor Rights, State-Owned Banks, and Investment Efficiency: Evidence from SARFAESI Act

Vishal Vaibhav

I examine whether firms borrowing exclusively from government-owned banks respond differently to SARFAESI Act and how it affects the investment efficiency. I find that firms borrowing exclusively from government-owned banks experience a significant increase in investment inefficiency following the reform. I also find the increase in inefficiency is concentrated among firms with high levels of tangible assets, suggesting that collateral enforcement is the primary mechanism driving the results.

View File
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

Who is willing to pay for travel time savings and how much? An iterative bidding contingent valuation study in Mumbai

Dale Robbennolt, Hyunjun Hwang, Aishwarya Jaiswal, Sagar Verma, Sandip Chakrabarti, Chandra Bhat

The value of travel time savings is one of the most widely used concepts in the transportation sector, serving as a critical component of transportation project evaluation, policy formulation, and transportation investment decisions. In this paper, we examine the value of travel time savings as measured using an iterative bidding contingent valuation approach in the context of Mumbai, India. By directly measuring the value of travel time savings, rather than imputing it, we are able to efficiently consider variations across individual characteristics and trip contexts. As importantly, we account for the possibility that some individuals may not be willing to pay at all for travel time savings, jointly modeling a binary outcome representing whether an individual is willing to pay at all (WTP) alongside the continuous value of travel time savings among those who are willing to pay. This approach allows us to identify those individuals who have a value of travel time savings (VTTS) of zero, which may occur due to very different psychological reasons than simply having a low value of travel time savings. The findings reveal significant differences in WTP and VTTS across population subgroups and trip characteristics. The results have important implications for the evaluation of transportation policies, prioritization of transportation infrastructure improvements, and development of priced congestion reduction strategies.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

The Perils of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Controversies: Implications for a Firm's Financial and Nonfinancial Performance

Amalesh Sharma, Sourav Bikash Borah, Anirban Adhikary, Sanjay Kumar Jena

Although ESG controversies are on the rise, research investigating them yields contradictory findings. The paper provides resolutions to the debate through investigating (a) how ESG controversies influence firms' short-term and long-term financial performance; (b) how firms navigate ESG controversies' effect; and (c) how ESG controversies influence firms' nonfinancial performance. Relying on legitimacy theory, the paper theorizes the relationships and, using 2992 and 2970 firm-year observations, respectively, finds that ESG controversies negatively influence a firm's short- and long-term performance; corporate ESG communication and environmental innovation reduce these effects. Although ESG controversies negatively affect ESG performance, they positively affect carbon emissions, customer complaint controversies, and responsible marketing controversies. To regain legitimacy lost through ESG controversies, firms can invest in supplier ESG training, responsible product development, and CSR committees. The paper contributes to the sustainable business strategy literature and guides managers in managing controversies for a better business environment.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

Macroeconomic uncertainty and firm cash holdings: the role of ownership

Janani Rangan, Sanket Mohapatra

During periods of heightened economic uncertainty, firms tend to accumulate more cash due to a precautionary motive. Firms belonging to different ownership groups may vary in their access to sources of finance. Consequently, their response to economic uncertainty could differ. We contribute to the literature by studying the differential impact of economic uncertainty, both global and domestic, on the cash holdings of firms across ownership groups.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

A Breakwater of Ignorance:' W.W. Hunter, Epistemic Anxiety, and Gazetteers in mid-Nineteenth Century India

Diki Sherpa, Yugank Goyal

How much did the colonial state ‘truly’ know about India? This question underpinned Sir William Wilson Hunter’s early foundational work, The Annals of Rural Bengal, which marked his entry into colonial knowledge production. In this text, Hunter offered a searing critique of the Company’s ‘unreliable’ and ‘incomplete’ knowledge. This article argues that such anxieties about ignorance, sharpened in the post-1857 imperial order, enabled the colonial state’s investment in local knowledge, culminating in the Gazetteer project. Hunter’s reconstruction of the Santal rebellion of 1855 articulated a sense of anxiety, reframing colonial ignorance as a political problem of governance and diagnosing it as the product of an inadequate colonial knowledge framework revealed in moments of rebellion and administrative delay. In casting ignorance as a political risk, he recast violence as evidence of administrative misrecognition, thereby justifying the need for systematic forms of knowledge production such as the Gazetteer. The article shows how epistemic anxiety was translated into bureaucratic forms of knowledge production, with the Gazetteer institutionalising uncertainty rather than resolving it.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

Internationalization and data capabilities: An institutional void perspective

Bibek Bhattacharya, Lakshmi Goyal, Rajarshi Mukherjee, Adrija Majumdar

In today's rapidly evolving global economy, although data intelligence has become a critical capability for firms seeking to thrive in competitive markets, not all firms are inclined to invest in it. Addressing this under-examined aspect, our study examines which firms invest more in data intelligence capabilities. Situating this study in an emerging market context, we predict that the extent of internationalization pursued by emerging economy firms is positively related to their investments in data intelligence capabilities. We further develop competing hypotheses to suggest that the quality of the home country institutions moderates the above-mentioned baseline relationship. We test our predictions on a sample of 3851 Indian firms from 1996 to 2022 and find support for our baseline hypothesis. We also find that with the improvement in the quality of home country institutions, firms with a higher degree of internationalization invest more in data intelligence capabilities. Our findings contribute to research on institutional theory, institutional voids, and the literature on internationalization by emerging economy firms.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2026

Family Ownership and CSR Overspending: Evidence from India on the Mediating Role of CSR Committee Composition

Pooja Thakur-Wernz, Chitra Singla, Olga Bruyaka

Why do some firms voluntarily exceed legally mandated requirements for corporate social responsibility (CSR)? We examine this question in the context of India, an emerging economy where the Companies Act of 2013 mandates eligible firms to spend 2% of profits on CSR. This institutional setting provides a clear benchmark for identifying firms’ CSR overspending, voluntary spending beyond the mandated threshold, as a substantive form of CSR engagement rather than compliance. Drawing on agency and stakeholder theories, we argue that family ownership influences CSR overspending through specific governance mechanisms: (a) overlapping membership between CSR and stakeholder relations committees and (b) female representation on the CSR committee. From an agency perspective, family owners pursue non-economic objectives such as preserving the family’s legacy and reputation. From a stakeholder perspective, they are particularly attentive to maintaining societal legitimacy. We propose that as family ownership increases, CSR governance becomes less oriented toward CSR spending compliance and more toward stakeholder preferences, leading to CSR overspending. Using panel data from 601 publicly listed Indian firms (2015–2024), we find robust empirical support for our research model. Our findings suggest that in a context where family ownership is widespread, CSR overspending represents a strategic choice shaped by family owners’ preferences and channeled through CSR governance mechanisms. This study contributes to research on family-firm ethics and CSR governance in emerging economies by clarifying how ownership and CSR committee composition influence CSR spending beyond compliance.

Read More
IIMA