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Working Papers | 2013

Identifying defective valves in a blowout preventer valve network

Diptesh Ghosh

Blowouts are nancially damaging for drilling companies and are ecological hazards. Hence
blowout prevention equipment is critical infrastructure for drilling companies. Blowout preventer
valves are important components of blowout prevention equipments and need to be checked
regularly. However, since these valves are often physically inaccessible, they are checked in
batches called test sets. In this paper we present an exact method to check the functional status
of all blowout preventer valves using a minimum number of test sets. We also present a heuristic
method to identify malfunctioning valves if they exist. We illustrate both methods using a real
world example.

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Working Papers | 2013

Strategies To Improve Urban Water Delivery In West Bengal, India: An Analysis Of Water Institutions And Benchmarking Of Water Delivery Organizations

Tirthankar Nag and Amit Garg

The study examines the status of urban water delivery in India through a case study of the state of West Bengal in India. The state has been selected as a unit of study to bring out the regional variances that are not captured at a more aggregate or country level study. The study focuses on various types of urban local bodies in the state, the organizational and institutional structure for water delivery and issues around them. The study also benchmarks various urban local bodies for their water service delivery through data envelopment analysis. The study finds that in the current state of fragmented institutions and shared responsibilities between various water organizations, there needs to be a focused policy guideline for integrated development of the water sector in the state. The study also identifies certain categories of urban local bodies, for which there are further scope for efficiency improvement.

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Working Papers | 2013

SB-robustness of Performance Measures of Control Chart

A. K. Laha and Pravida Raja

Control charts play a very important role in the control of manufacturing processes. In this paper we consider the commonly used performance measures for control charts and study their SB-robustness. It is shown that the False Alarm Probability, Average Sample Number (ASN) when the process is in-control, No-Signal Probability and ASN when the process is out-of-control are all SB-robust at the family of all normal distributions with bounded mean and standard deviation. It is also shown that these performance measures are not SB-robust at the larger family of normal distributions with unbounded mean and standard deviation.

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Working Papers | 2013

Development of a Causal Framework linking High Perofrmance HRM Practices, Positive Psychological Capital, Creative Behaviours

Vishal Gupta

Synthesizing the ideas of high-performance Human Resource Management (HRM), positive psychological capital, and componential theory of creativity, the present study develops a multi-level causal framework linking high-performance work practices (HPWP), positive psychological capital, employee creative performance behaviors and creative performance. The paper argues that to provide a convincing explanation of the association between HRM practices and creativity, we need to improve our theoretical understanding in three key areas. These are the nature of HRM, and especially the rationale for the specific lists of HR practices; the linkage between HRM practices and employee creativity; and the 'black-box' linking HRM practices and employee creativity. A model is presented to explore these linkages. The existing literatures on HRM, Creativity and PsyCap are reviewed and directions for future research are provided.

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Working Papers | 2013

A Memory-Aided Broadcast Mechanism for Enabling a Rural Community Radio on an Ad-hoc peer-to-peer Mobile Network

Kavitha Ranganathan and Sonia Arora

This paper investigates deploying a village level community-radio application on top of a MANET comprising completely of basic mobile phones. We envision a system, where any user in the network is equally empowered to generate and distribute audio content to the entire network, using his or her mobile phone. The paper focuses on the study of suitable broadcast algorithms for the network. In this context, we propose a novel broadcast scheme where nodes bank on their memory to decide whether to forward packets of an audio stream-capitalizing on their past behavior to stabilize on fixed routes for the entire stream. In our scheme called Environs Aware Broadcast Mechanism (EABA), a node gauges the local mobility around itself, and uses that to decide which broadcast mechanism to use. When mobility is high, it uses SBA (Scalable Broadcast Algorithm), a popular neighbor -knowledge broadcast algorithm with high overheads, but when mobility is low, it switches to MaBA (Memory-aided Broadcast Algorithm). Extensive simulations on a village-level MANET, confirm that EABA is successful in substantially reducing jitter, latency and packet loss: all critical metrics for an audio application. At the same time, EABA does not incur other overheads and maintains the same levels of reachability and efficiency as SBA

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Working Papers | 2013

Corporate Governance: Financial Regulators and Courts Need To Be On the Same Page

Anurag K. Agarwal

Real corporate governance requires tough financial regulators which effectively work to safeguard investors' interests in securities and endeavour to create a proper environment for the securities market to develop. The financial regulators-Securities and Exchange Board of India, SEBI in India, and Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC in the US-have been created by the legislature. They are independent expert bodies and are vested with remarkable powers, but they have to work within the framework of law, which is interpreted by the courts. This paper examines the role of courts vis-à-vis expert bodies in general and financial regulators in particular, and highlights the importance of the two being on the same page for effective corporate governance.

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Working Papers | 2013

Advertisement Placement in TV Programs: Different Roles of ELM and Mood Protection Mechanism

Mayank Jyotsna Soni

This study explores how involvement of the audience with cognitive/affective program influence their processing of advertisements aired in between the program because of varying involvement within program. An experimental design was conducted. Cognitive ad recall was found to be higher when involvement with program (both cognitive and affective) is low than when involvement with program is high. Affective ad recall was found to be lower when involvement with program (cognitive and affective) is low than when the involvement with program is high. This study will be useful for managers in choosing television slots to broadcast their advertisements. ELM, Mood Protection Mechanism and Resource Matching Hypothesis are used to explain information processing mechanisms. The results also indicated a need of extending existing information processing theories.

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Working Papers | 2013

Sectoral Choice of Credit in Rural India

Debdatta Pal and A. K. Laha

This article examines, what makes rural household a preferred choice for formal lenders? It develops sample selected ordered probit model to address this question. While, the selection equation models the determinants of access to credit, an ordered probit model is used to determine the factors affecting the choice of credit sources in a hierarchical order. Using household data from six Indian states this study finds corroborative evidence that relatively resource rich households even while staying at distant location enjoy greater access to formal creditors. It also identifies a new factor i.e., interlinked credit as a significant variable influencing the access to formal credit.

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Working Papers | 2013

Policy Gaps for Promoting Green Grassroots Innovations and Traditional Knowledge in Developing Countries: Learning from Indian Experience

Anil K. Gupta

Society for Research and Initiatives for Technologies and Institutions [SRISTI] has pioneered a knowledge intensive model for transforming institutional context of problem solving at community level. In this paper, the building blocks of a sustainable innovation eco system have been identified. The concept of National Innovation System [NIS], which ignored the knowledge of informal sector, has been redefined. A major gap in the literature on NIS is being filled through the contributions of Honey Bee Network. While several policy initiatives in the last decade have reduced the gap in the eco system, a great deal remains to be done. The ethical accountability of academic world towards the local knowledge holders has not been systematically understood and enforced adequately. The terms like BOP [Bottom of the Pyramid] are extremely unfortunate because they distract our attention away from those pyramids in which poor people may actually be on the top. The paper, thus, makes a case for changing the mindset and creating a new set of institutional conditions to promote creativity and innovation at grassroots level.

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Working Papers | 2013

Explaining Access to Credit by Rural Households: Results based on a Study of Several States in India

Saugandh Datta and Anirban Ghosh

Against the backdrop of evolution of rural credit system in India as well as its observed failure to be inclusive in character, this paper makes use of a fairly large data set of the Center for Mangement in Agriculture in Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad to try to explain several hitherto unaddressed issues-why certain rural households fail to have any access to credit from any source, and especially from the much-publicized and much-pampeered formal source, and even from the emerging MFIs. Three probit models are used to explain this phenomenon in terms of village and household characteristics of the sample households. The paper highlights the need for strengthening rural infrastructure, which is often found to stand in complementary relation with credit demand and credit access. Emphasis is also laid on strengthening of semi-formal souces of credit known as micro-finance, which seem to follow a market logic rather than strict regulatory approach of formal banking system, and doesn't always favor large borrowers and large projects, in spite of apparent economies of scale of such projects. Familiarity to powerful rural personnel seem to be playing a dubious role in influencing credit demand and credit access-a matter which needs to be addressed revamping of development policy administration in the countryside.

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