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3819 items in total found

Working Papers | 2014

Basic Emergency Obstetric Care for mothers and newborns through 24 x 7 primary health centres A case study of three 24/7 PHCs from a high focus district in India

Parvathy Raman, Bharati Sharma, and K. V. Ramani

The National Rural health Mission created 24X7 Primary Health Centres in order to provide basic emergency and obstetric services to women. The current study looked into how far the above NRHM objective has been met.
Our study used the case methodology based on the WHO framework for providing safe care as a benchmark. Our resource constraints limited our study to examine the working of only three 24x7 PHCs; one each from an urban, semi-rural, and a rural block of a high focus district in a large Indian State. These blocks were selected purposefully based on geographical terrain and general socio-economic profile. Data sources were statistics from the district and block health offices, a checklist to assess supplies and equipment for childbirth and newborn care in the PHCs, and eleven in-depth interviews with Block Health Officers, PHC medical officers, and nurse-midwives.
Our study showed that the urban PHC attracted more women than the rural and semi-urban PHCs. Reasons for preferring the urban PHC were due to easy access, staff presence and availability of medicines and drugs. An active female worker who stays close to the urban PHC has been very successful in getting women to the PHC. The major reasons for non-utilization in the rural block include geographically difficult area, and the tradition of home deliveries, while the relatively low utilization of the semi-urban PHC is due to presence of private practitioners nearby. Our study also showed that women prefer to go to private practitioners since JSY (Janani Suraksha Yojana) maternity benefits are available for institutional deliveries in public or private facilities, and therefore 24 X 7 PHCs were not an added attraction if private facilities are available nearby. Monitoring at various levels needs to be strengthened to improve the effective service delivery in public health facilities.
Our observations are from a sample of three 24/7 PHCs in a high focus district, and hence cannot be generalized.

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Working Papers | 2014

Air pollution in Indian cities: short term mortality impacts and interactions with temperature

Hem H. Dholakia, Dhiman Bhadra, and Amit Garg

Background: Indian cities are among the most polluted globally, yet assessments of short term mortality impacts due to pollution have been limited. Furthermore, studies examining temperature-pollution interactions on mortality are largely absent. Addressing this gap remains important in providing research evidence to better link health outcomes and air quality standards for India.

Methods: Daily all-cause mortality, temperature, humidity and particulate matter less than 10 microns (PM10) data were collected for five cities-Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Shimla spanning 2005 - 2012. Poisson regression models were developed to study short term impacts of PM10 as well as temperature-pollution interactions on daily all-cause mortality.

Results: We find that mortality associated with a 10 µg/m3 PM10 increase is highest for Shimla (1.36%, 95% confidence interval = -0.38% to 3.1%) and the least for Ahmedabad (0.16%, 95% CI = -0.31% to 0.62%). The corresponding values for Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai are 0.22% (-0.04% - 0.49%), 0.85% (0.06% - 1.63%) and 0.2% (0.1% - 0.3%) respectively. The relative health benefits of reducing pollution are higher for cleaner cities (Shimla) as opposed to dirtier cities (Mumbai). Overall we find that temperature and pollution interactions do not significantly impact mortality for the cities studied.

Conclusions: This is one of the first multi-city studies that assess heterogeneity of air pollution impacts and possible modification due to temperature in Indian cities that are spread across climatic regions and topographies. Our findings highlight the need for pursuing stringent pollution control policies in Indian cities to minimize health impacts.

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Working Papers | 2014

Model Risk in Pricing Path-dependent Derivatives: An Illustration

Vineet Virmani

Model selection and model uncertainty go hand-in-hand. However, while there is uncertainty associated with the selection of any model, the context is paramount. This study is an illustration of issues surrounding model risk when pricing products whose payoff depends crucially on forward volatility. In particular, we try and quantify model risk associated with pricing of cliquet options using stochastic volatility models.

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Working Papers | 2014

Consumers' Need for Uniqueness: A Cross-Cultural Validation

Dheeraj Sharma and Varsha Verma

We conduct a cross-cultural validation of the Consumers' Need for Uniqueness (CNFU) scale. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the cross-cultural reliability and validity of the CNFU scale developed by Tian, Bearden and Hunter (2001) was tested on the basis of a sample of 1191 consumers from five countries, namely, USA, Brazil, India, Thailand, and Mexico. The scale was estimated and validated in all five cultures. The analysis reveals that the CNFU scale has sound psychometric properties. The results indicate generality of all the scale items and that the CNFU is a cross-cultural phenomenon that has a significant impact on market maven, a key marketplace variable.

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Working Papers | 2014

Relationship Marketing in Online Retailing - A Meta-Analytic Approach

Varsha Verma and Dheeraj Sharma

This study is a meta-analysis of relationship marketing (RM) in online retailing. The study builds on the meta-analytic model suggested by Palmatier, Dant, Grewal, and Evans (2006) and extends the framework in the domain of online retailing. Specifically, this study identifies key antecedents and consequences of relationship marketing in online retailing. The study also examines the role of four mediators namely trust, commitment, relationship quality, and relationship satisfaction between the antecedents and outcomes of relationship marketing. The model proffered in this study will help managers in identifying the key drivers in relationship marketing. Similarity and seller expertise were found to have the strongest impact on relational mediators and word of mouth was the most critical outcome of relationship marketing efforts.

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Working Papers | 2014

Individual Factors and Organisational Initiatives Enabling
the Success of PWD-Managers

P. Malhotra and Manjari Singh

In this paper we look into the factors that support the career advancement of People with Disability (PWD) and trigger the breaking of the glass ceiling. We explore the Social Cognitive Career Theory and examine the organisational initiatives for PWD to understand their advancement into the managerial cadre. Using 13 semi-structured interviews involving PWD-managers, their managers and subordinates from the Indian IT/ITes Industry, we found multiple factors that facilitate the success of PWD-Managers. These factors can be categorised into individual factors and organisational initiatives which allow PWDs to become "Performers" & enable them to move into managerial positions.

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Working Papers | 2014

Dominance of Affective over Cognitive Customer Satisfaction in Satisfaction-Loyalty Relationship in Service Encounters

Piyush Kumar Sinha, Hari Govind Mishra, and Surabhi Kaul

The paper reports on a study which aims to understand the role of cognitive and affective components of customer satisfaction in service encounters. The paper is structured to explore a brief synthesis of the extant literature on key conceptual issues concerning the role of emotion in service encounters. Subsequently, the paper explores the satisfaction-loyalty relationship when both cognitive and affective component are included. The focus of this study is to investigate the relationship between emotional satisfaction, service quality, customer loyalty, and relationship quality within a retail setting. A total of eight retail stores of Jalandhar city participated in the study. During a two-month data collection period, 200 customers were surveyed. Convenience sampling was employed and self-administered surveys were used to collect data. The Findings emphasize the dominant role of affective component in satisfaction loyalty relationship.

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Working Papers | 2014

Impact of Consumer Social Responsibility and Brand Social Responsibility Image on Brand Loyalty

Piyush Kumar Sinha, Hari Govind Mishra, and Sarabjot Singh

The present paper focus on ITC notebook and try to understand consumer social responsibility for cause related brand and how their preference level changes with different firm donations, and how this activity leads to brand loyalty in long run. An experimental design with 693 participants was used. The results shows that consumers like cause related marketing campaigns and ready to do extra effort for that brand, provided the donation amount invested by companies should be high as much high as company can provide for the cause. Elaborative offers and attitude toward the advertisement affect the social brand image of the company, and these two affects along with brand image produce positive results on brand loyalty among consumers for such low involvement products.

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Working Papers | 2014

Buying Impulsive Trait: An effective moderator for shopping emotions and perceived risk

Piyush Kumar Sinha, Hari Govind Mishra, Surabhi Kaul, and Sarabjot Singh

The study provides an evidence of the relationship between buying traits, perceived risk and buying emotions. The study also indicates that the three emotional states of arousal and pleasure and dominance have significant relationship with impulsive buying behavior. Arousal which was active with buying intentions and impulsive buying was seen insignificant with moderating regression results. Buying impulsive trait was found to be significant moderator of pleasure, dominance, perceived risk and buying intention. Perceived risk was judged to have a negative relation with impulsive buying intension whereas it had no relation with Impulsive buying behavior. The study is expected to contribute towards the body of knowledge by building a model that incorporates affective, cognitive and individual factors related to impulsive buying.

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Working Papers | 2014

Substitute and Complementary Effects of Social Support on the Dimensions of Empowerment

Manjari Singh and Anita Sarkar

The study examines the interactions among the effect of social support provided to an individual by three groups, viz., family, colleagues, and superior, on each dimension of psychological empowerment. On the basis of earlier studies we have considered the following six dimensions of psychological empowerment here: meaning, competence, impact, self-determination at job and organizational levels, and control in non-work domain. We hypothesized that there is substitute effect between family support (support received from family members) and workplace support (support provided by colleagues and superior) and that there is complementary effect between colleague and superior support. We also hypothesized that the interactive effect of all three forms of social support together will be positive.
This study was done for 401 women primary school teachers from 54 schools located in the state of West Bengal in India after a pilot survey of 288 respondents for pre-testing the instrument. The teachers rated their psychological empowerment and the family support available to them. Colleague support and superior's support was rated by the teachers' colleagues and superior respectively. On an average 2-3 colleagues responded for each teacher, resulting in total 1026 colleague responses. Inter-rater agreement was checked before aggregating colleagues' responses. Tests for substitute and complementary effects were done in two ways: one, by hierarchical regression analysis after applying the centering procedure and two, using the macro "simple-3way.sps" available with the statistical package SPSS 17.
As hypothesized, we found support for substitute and complementary effects. Employees having low colleague support required stronger family support to perceive greater meaning in their work (substitute effect). Similarly, employees having low superior's support need more family support to have better opinion of their competence, more impact of their work, and higher level of self-determination in organizational context. Our findings also showed that employees with supportive superior perceive more competence to do their work and greater self-determination in the organizational context if given further support by their colleagues, thus showing complementary effect. Interestingly, there is evidence of substitute effect rather than complementary effect for control in non-work domain. We also found that if support from all three groups is high then employees perceive more meaning in their work, greater self-determination in the job context, and better control in non-work domain.

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