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Journal Articles | 2022

Work from home amenability and venture capital financing during COVID-19

Jagriti Srivastava and Balagopal Gopalakrishnan

Applied Economics

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on venture capital financing of firms. We find a significant shift in the profile of firms that obtain venture capital financing during the pandemic-induced economic crisis. Firms in industries that are more amenable to work from home obtain greater amounts of financing. Growth-stage firms operating in amenable industries are able to obtain higher financing than early-stage firms. The higher financing obtained by firms in amenable industries is driven by venture capital funds focused on the domestic market. Additionally, the higher financing is obtained from a single venture capital investor rather than a consortia of investors. Taken together, the preference of venture capital funds indicate a less risk-averse behavior in financing firms amenable to remote working. The findings of our study using monthly firm-level data provide insights on venture capital financing during the pandemic.

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Journal Articles | 2022

From fear to courage: Indian lesbians’ and gays’ quest for Inclusive ethical organizations

Ernesto Noronha, Nidhi S. Bisht, and Premilla D’Cruz

Journal of Business Ethics

This paper focusses on the experiences of Indian lesbians and gays (LGs) who are subjected to unethical acts of workplace bullying which get manifested through constant guesswork, comments and questioning about their sexual identity in the hostile Indian context. Given this, LG participants usually opt for secrecy and lead a double life, using ‘passing’ and ‘covering’ strategies to manage economic, social and psychological risks. Nonetheless, this paper rewrites the negative tenor of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transexuals research by underscoring how LG participants move from fear to courage in their endeavour to live authentic lives while considering the broader organizational and social context. We argue that their courage is manifested mainly through deliberate micro-disclosures and a sense of defiance which can be enhanced if organizations are designed to be more inclusive and ethical. Consequently, participants defined inclusive ethical organizations as having conducive environments with trustworthy, supportive, secure, fair, unbiased and safe non-discriminatory policies open to the idea of diverse sexual orientations. Our findings point to the fact that, first and foremost, organizations must be crafted and sustained to be courageous within a hostile social climate, for employees to overcome their fears.

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Journal Articles | 2022

Work life balance indicators and Talent Management approach: A qualitative investigation of Indian luxury hotels

Sunil Buddhiraja, Biju Varkkey, and Stephen McKenna

Employee Relations: The International Journal

Purpose – The purpose of the study is twofold: (1) it captures the work–life balance (WLB) experiences of front-office employees to inductively classify a set of WLB indicators for the locally owned Indian luxury hotels and (2) it further examines the existing WLB practices of the select hotels with the lens of talent management (TM) approach of key human resource management (HRM) practices (Thunnissen, 2016). Design/methodology/approach – To explore and classify WLB indicators, an exploratory, qualitative approach is utilized by administering seven focus group discussions involving 70 front-office employees working in Indian luxury hotels. Seven in-depth interviews with HR professionals were triangulated with secondary data to capture and analyse the existing WLB practices of sampled organizations. Findings – Four clusters of WLB indicators that are grounded in the lived experiences of front-office employees are identified and presented. Interview data from human resource representatives unveil that hotels consider existing WLB practices as key HRM practices with an inclusive TM approach. The findings also surface the differences in expectations of front-office employees and WLB practices followed by the hotels. Research limitations/implications – First, the paper addresses the issue of WLB from employees’ perspective which is crucial for designing effective WLB practices. Second, the paper contributes to the existing TM literature from the perspective of WLB practices. Originality/value – The originality of the study is grounded in the employees’ lived experiences to classify the WLB indicators for India and further examine the WLB practices through the lens of the TM approach.

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Journal Articles | 2022

Women’s labor force participation and household technology adoption

Gautam Bose, Tarun Jain, and Sarah Walker

European Economic Review

Journal Articles | 2022

Big-4 auditors and audit quality: A novel firm life-cycle approach

Sonali Jain and Sobhesh Kumar Agarwalla

Meditari Accountancy Research

Purpose – Firm-specific factors such as size, profitability, growth, risk and complexity, in addition to agency-related issues determine both auditor selection and firm life-cycle stage. This paper aims to examine whether and how the effect of Big-4 auditors (B4As) on client firms’ audit quality varies across firms’ life-cycle stages. Design/methodology/approach – The sample comprises 1,813 firm-year observations in India’s emerging economy from 2011 to 2020. The Modified Jones model and Jones (signed, unsigned) model are used to compute discretionary accruals/audit quality. The authors use Koh et al.’s (2015) methodology to determine the firm life cycle. Findings – The authors’ key findings show that the client firms employing B4As have superior audit quality than those employing non-Big-4 auditors (NB4As). The authors also show that the life-cycle stage significantly impacts the relationship between B4As and a firm’s audit quality. Furthermore, B4A client firms report superior audit quality vis-à-vis NB4A firms only in the birth- and decline-stages. The audit quality of growth- and mature-stage B4A and NB4A client firms is not significantly different. Practical implications – Implications for managers include the decision to hire B4As. Given that B4As earn a significant fee premium, managers leading birth- and decline-stage firms should hire B4As, while managers of growth- and mature-stage firms should not. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the moderating effect of the firm life-cycle stage on the selection of B4As and their impact on audit quality.

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Journal Articles | 2022

The olfactory experience (in retail) scale: Construction, validation and generalization

Subhadip Roy and Priyanka Singh

Journal of Service Management

Purpose – Measurement scales for sensory experience in retailing exist for sight, touch and sound. In the present study, the authors aim to develop the olfactory experience (OEX) scale in the context of retailing.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on literature review and six studies that follow standard scale development protocols (combined n 5 1,203), the authors develop and validate a three-dimensional OEX scale. The scale is further validated in the final study in a different market set-up than the first five.

Findings – The authors found the three dimensions of OEX as (scent) company, congeniality and congruity. The OEX scale is found to be generalizable and valid across different cultural and market set-ups. In addition, the OEX (i.e. the scale) was found to effect psychological and behavioral outcomes of the consumer in a significant manner.

Research limitations/implications – The present study contributes to the domain of sensory experience in retailing with the OEX scale and provides three new dimensions of OEX for the academicians to further explore.

Practical implications – The OEX scale provides a ready to use tool for the retailer to gauge the level of OEX in the store and to predict consumer attitudes and behavior.

Originality/value –The study is the first to develop a scale for OEX in retailing or for that matter in consumer behavior.

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Journal Articles | 2022

Disentangling reciprocal relationships between R&D intensity, profitability and capital market performance: A panel VAR analysis

Amit Karna, Christos Mavis, and Ansgar Richter

Long Range Planning

Research and development (R&D) investments are strategic choices that firms make to create and sustain competitive advantage. Extant literature proposes that firms’ R&D investments and their profitability and capital market performance are reciprocally related. However, the direction of these relationships and their temporal nature are unclear. We take a real options perspective to argue that the long-run firm performance effects of R&D investments are better than their short-term ones, and that the initial level of R&D intensity influences the nature of these relationships. We apply panel vector autoregression (P-VAR) to a sample of 6623 U.S. firms over the 1990–2020 period in order to test our hypotheses. Our results indicate that increases in R&D intensity have negative effects on profitability in the short term, yet these effects diminish relatively quickly. The effects of increases in R&D intensity on capital market performance are positive and persist over time. Consistent with our predictions, they are contingent on the initial levels of R&D intensity and performance. The findings are fundamentally in line with the real options perspective employed here, yet they add important nuance to our understanding of when, how, and under which conditions R&D investments and firm performance affect one another.

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Journal Articles | 2022

Impostor phenomenon and identity-based microaggression among hispanic/Latinx Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: A Qualitative Exploration

Devasmita Chakraverty

Violence and Gender

Impostor phenomenon is defined as a psychological condition when some successful people do not fully ascribe their success to ability or competence, but attribute it to luck, generosity from others, or misjudgment, thereby experiencing an internal conflict. Microaggression is defined as subtle disparaging behavior that consciously or unconsciously discriminates people based on their background, personal identity, and group membership. Both impostor phenomenon and microaggression are commonly experienced in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, especially by women and BIPOC individuals—black, indigenous, or other person of color. Hence, the connection between microaggression and impostor phenomenon among BIPOC individuals needs deeper exploration. This qualitative study examined the research question: How do Hispanic/Latinx PhD students and postdoctorates in STEM describe impostor phenomenon and microaggression based on ethnic identity? U.S.-based participants were recruited using convenience sampling and snowball sampling. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 29 participants who self-reported experiencing impostor phenomenon. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed inductively using constant comparison to develop themes. Twenty-two of the participants (18 women) experienced microaggression during training based on their Hispanic/Latinx identity. Microaggressive comments were made by faculty members, peers, and others in academia. Microaggression and impostor phenomenon were related through “othering” or feeling like outsiders, creating a sense of (un)belonging in STEM fields.

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Journal Articles | 2022

A two-stage integer programming model considering transaction equivalence for privacy preservation

Srikumar Krishnamoorthy

Computers and Operations Research

Preserving privacy is one of the fundamental requirements of firms that share data with their business partners for building advanced data mining models. Firms often aim to protect the disclosure of sensitive knowledge or information discovered during the data mining process. In this study, we investigate the problem of Frequent Itemset Hiding (FIH) which aims to hide sensitive itemset relationships present in a transactional database. We propose a two-stage integer programming model that maximizes the proportion of unaltered transactions in the sanitized database and protects sensitive itemset relationships. The model exploits the concept of transactional equivalence and significantly reduces the size of the FIH problem. In addition, our model enables the identification of solutions with minimal side effects. We conduct an experimental evaluation on both real and synthetic databases to show that our approach is scalable and produces a sanitized database with maximum accuracy. The generated solution is also found to have lower side effects (itemset information loss) compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Our experiments on very large problem instances show problem size reductions of one to three orders of magnitude. The proposed approach is quite attractive and practically useful for solving large-scale FIH problem instances and preserving privacy in increasingly shared and big data-driven organizational environments.

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Journal Articles | 2022

How COVID-19 lockdown has impacted the sanitary pads distribution among adolescent girls and women in India

Karan Babbar, Niharika Rustagi, and Pritha Dev

Journal of Social Issues

This paper empirically explores the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying lockdown on adolescent girls’ and women's access to sanitary pads in India. We have used the National Health Mission's Health Management Information System (NHM-HMIS) data for the study, which provides data on pads' distribution on a district level. The empirical strategy used in the study exploits the variation of districts into red, orange, and green zones as announced by the Indian Government. To understand how lockdown severity impacts access to sanitary pads, we used a difference-in-difference (DID) empirical strategy to study sanitary pads' access in red and orange zones compared to green zones. We find clear evidence of the impact of lockdown intensity on the provision of sanitary pads, with districts with the strictest lockdown restrictions suffering the most. Our study highlights how sanitary pads distribution was overlooked during the pandemic, leaving girls and women vulnerable to managing their menstrual needs. Thus, there is a requirement for strong policy to focus on the need to keep sanitary pads as part of the essential goods to ensure the needs of the girls and women are met even in the midst of a pandemic, central to an inclusive response.

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IIMA