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Working Papers | 2010

A Perspective on Fisheries Sector Interventions for Livelihood Promotion

Samar K. Datta, Srijan Pal Singh, Milindo Chakrabarti, Subho Biswas, and Bittu Sah

The distinctive features of fisheries resources, fishers and their geographic contexts, on the one hand, and broad stylized features of the existing lacklustre performance of this sector, on the other, call for specialized and sustained efforts to promote livelihood of usually poor, backward and unorganized fisher communities, which are nevertheless and often the most intimate stakeholder of this sector and its underlying resources. To develop a perspective on intervention strategies for livelihood promotion of most intimate stakeholders-that is, the fisher folk, in a sustainable manner, this paper uses clues from recent economic theories and management tools on property rights, Coase Theorem, stakeholder cooperation and public-private-community partnership in an effort towards resolving the multi-dimensional problems of this sector. It stratifies and brings out the pros and cons of the existing fishing efforts into four categories of models-the traditional marketing model, state-led models of livelihood promotion and fisheries development (including cases of para-statal cooperatives), entrepreneur or leader-driven models, and technology-driven models, through selected illustrations from different parts of the country and covering both marine and inland (including brackish water) segments of fisheries. The paper, after identifying the major ingredients for sustainable livelihood development around fisheries, finally articulates Dr. APJ Kalam's concept of PURA to recommend a rural entrepreneur-led hybrid model of fisheries development to solicit sustainable and growth oriented cooperation among the suppliers of land (i.e., stakeholders to fishery resources, which are available through Nature), labor (including fishers) and capital (including professionals). The ultimate goal of this paper is to derive inspiration from Coase Theorem and the Japanese model of Keiretsu to empower the producers and suppliers of fish-namely, the fisher folk and to place them at the centre stage of control of rural entrepreneur-led private organizations, wherein the fisher community will not be deemed as mere consumers or vendors of fish, but will enter as dignified co-producer partners with significant shares in residual claim and residual control in those organizations.

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Working Papers | 2010

Introducing Competition in Container Movement by Rail

Sebastian Morris, Ajay Pandey, G. Raghuram, and Gangwar Rachna

Container movement by rail was a monopoly of Indian Railways (IR) until recently and its subsidiary, Container Corporation (CONCOR) was the sole operator of container trains. Entry of other entities in 2007 has been driven by larger public policy concerns. In the process, issues such as resistance of the incumbent, erection of entry barriers, denial of level playing field, use of a closely held organization as a consultant, and conflicting roles of IR as licensor, regulator, service provider, and operator came into sharp focus. This paper attempts to review the process starting from the policy announcement (February 2005) to evolution of a Model Concession Agreement (January 2007) and shows how policies were influenced by the incumbent to restrict competition by creating barriers on the one hand and how an alternate view provided by external entities, like the Planning Commission and other non-IR stakeholders significantly altered the course of action leading to entry of a large number of competing players.

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Working Papers | 2010

Why Should 5000 Children Die in India Every Day? Major Causes and Managerial Challenges

K. V. Ramani, Dileep Mavalankar, Tapasvi Puwar, Joshi Sanjay, Harish Kumar, and Imran Malek

Globally, more than 10 million children under 5 years of age, die every year (20 children per minute), most from preventable causes, and almost all in poor countries. Major causes of child death include neonatal disorders (death within 28 days of birth), diarrhea, pneumonia, and measles. Malnutrition accounts for almost 35 % of childhood diseases.

India alone accounts for almost 5000 child deaths under 5 years old (U5) every day. India.s child heath indicators are poor even compared with our Asian neighbors, namely Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Nepal and Bangladesh. Within India, the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh account for almost 60 % of all child deaths

India.s neonatal mortality, which accounts for almost 50 % of U5 deaths, is one of the highest in the world. India launched the Universal Immunization Program in 1985, but the status of full immunization in India has reached only 43.5 % by 2005-06. India started the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in 1975 to provide supplementary nutrition to children, but 50 % of our children are still malnourished; nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa. The WHO/UNICEF training program on Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illnesses, known as IMNCI, started in India a few years ago, but the progress is very slow.

What is unfortunate is the fact that most of these deaths are preventable through proven interventions: preventive interventions and/or treatment interventions, but the management of childhood illnesses is very poor.

In this working paper, we bring out the nature and magnitude of child deaths in India (Chapter 1) and then share with you in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 our observations on the management of some of national programs of the government of India such as

The Universal Immunization Program (UIP)
The Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)
The Integrated Management of Neonatal and Child Illnesses (IMNCI)

In the final chapter (Chapter 5), we highlight certain managerial challenges to satisfactorily address the child mortality and morbidity in our country.

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Working Papers | 2010

Organization Development Experiences . A Case for Enriching HRD through OD

T. V. Rao

This article reviews a few definitions of OD and identifies eight characters that are necessary to call an activity or experience as an OD activity or experience. The article then goes on to examine ten case studies (of research, consulting and OD) of what appears like an OD activity in which the author was involved as one of the facilitators for whole system or subsystem and examines each on of them for their appropriateness to be called as OD interventions. The author then goes on to derive some lessons from these experiences. The article outlines also some advantages of using traditional OD approach in various HRD interventions and offers some suggestions for making specific HRD interventions like competency mapping, 360Degree Feedback based leadership Development and Assessment and Development Centers as OD activities. The paper concludes that using an OD approach enriches HRD and yields a good ROI on HRD interventions.

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Working Papers | 2009

The Dynamic Relationship between Price and Trading Volume:Evidence from Indian Stock Market

Brajesh Kumar, Priyanka Singh, and Ajay Pandey

This study investigates the nature of relationship between price and trading volume for 50 Indian stocks. Firstly the contemporaneous and asymmetric relation between price and volume are examined. Then we examine the dynamic relation between returns and volume using VAR, Granger causality, variance decomposition (VD) and impulse response function (IRF). Mixture of Distributions Hypothesis (MDH), which tests the GARCH vs. Volume effect, is also studied between the conditional volatility and volume. The results show that there is positive and asymmetric relation between volume and price changes. Further the results of VAR and Granger causality show that there is a bi-directional relation between volume and returns. However, the results of VD imply weak dynamic relation between returns and volume which becomes more evident from the plots of IRF. On MDH, our results are mixed, neither entirely rejecting the MDH nor giving it an unconditional support.

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Working Papers | 2009

Strategic Orientation of Outsourcing Firms:Demystifying Key Differentiators

Kirti Sharda

Despite the importance of outsourcing firms and the highly competitive nature of the outsourcing industry, there has been minimal examination of outsourcing firm strategy. This paper investigates the strategic focus of 60 outsourcing firms using empirical data collected through survey and semi-structured interviews from 226 top management team respondents. Factor and cluster analysis reveal three outsourcing firm archetypes based on their strategic orientation, namely, superachievers, quality advocates and defenders. The dominance of these archetypes also varies across business activities offered by sample firms. By delineating dimensions underlying outsourcing form strategy and by identifying archetypes of strategic orientation, the paper provides an understanding of key differentiators of outsourcing firm performance.

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Working Papers | 2009

Configurations of Business Process Outsourcing Firms and Organizational Performance

Kirti Sharda and Chatterjee Leena

There is an increasing recognition of outsourcing firms as new organizational forms with unique systems and practices. This paper uses a configurational approach to integrate learnings from outsourcing literature, organization and management theory, strategic management and strategic human resource management in order to understand similarities and differences between outsourcing firms and their performance. It formulates a conceptual framework that proposes that certain combinations of work designs, strategic orientations, client relationships and contexts could lead to better organizational performance within a sample of outsourcing firms.

The paper uses principal components factor analysis, Ward.s minimum variance method, K-means cluster analysis, and chi-square to analyze data collected from 60 outsourcing firms across India. Five dominant configurations of outsourcing firms emerge, namely, clear-eyed strategists, adapting professionals, focalizing artisans, conservative controllers and overambitious associates. Further examination with Kruskal Wallis One-Way ANOVA and Tamhane.s T2 test indicates that specific configurations of outsourcing firms are indeed associated with better performance across a variety of organizational performance parameters.

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Working Papers | 2009

Feasibility and Sustainability Model for Identity Management

Rajanish Dass and Pal Sujoy

National Identity projects and providing such identification to citizens in various countries around the globe has captured attention of late. Although the perceived benefits are numerous, nonetheless the challenges and bottlenecks for a successful rollout are many. The objective of this paper is to put forward the drivers and inhibitors for adopting a common identity management system across various organizations and to suggest a model for determining the feasibility and sustainability of such a system. The paper develops on TAM for proposing a model for identifying the drivers and inhibitors of managing such an identity management exercise. This paper highlights various factors affecting successful implementation of an identity management system and investigates the impact of these factors. The model suggested in this paper would allow organizations and policy makers to determine the critical factors for the implementation of an identity management system in large scale.

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Working Papers | 2009

Point of Purchase Communication: Role of Information Search, Store Benefit and Shopping Involvement

Dwarika Prasad Uniyal and Piyush Kumar Sinha

Point of Purchase (PoP) is the place where a customer is about to buy the product. This is the crucial point where the exchange takes place. It offers us a last chance to remind or attract customers. In spite of a considerable expenditure on point of purchase material by companies, there is a lack of an established method of measuring the effectiveness of communication at the retail outlet. The current study is an attempt to define and measure the extent of usage of PoP by consumers while shopping. It explores the phenomenon with the help of an experimentation using two main variables; level of information search and store benefits sought. It uses shopping involvement as a mediating variable.

During the course of study scales for usage of PoP communication and shopping involvement were developed. In-depth interviews were carried among shoppers to understand their motivations and gratifications with regard to shopping. The interview findings were used to develop scales, which were tested before being used during the experiment. The experiments involved building scenarios specific to shopping situations. Participant observations were carried out at stores with different formats.

The study found that all the three variables were significant in terms of main as well as interaction effects. Based on the findings the authors suggest a framework for enhancing the effectiveness of PoP Communication.

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Working Papers | 2009

Indian Takeover Regulation - Under Reformed and Over Modified

Parekh Sandeep

The takeover of substantial number of shares, voting rights or control in a listed Indian company attracts the provision of SEBI (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations 1997. The regulations have been amended nearly 20 times since inception, though the amendments have mainly concentrated on areas which needed no amendment. At the same time a vast number of obvious problems have not been rectified in the regulations. The large number of amendments have also created requirement of a compulsory tender offer of such unnecessary complexity as to make it virtually unintelligible to even a well qualified professional.

This paper argues that the complexity in the trigger points for disclosure and tender offer introduced over the years lacks a philosophy, and most of the amendments can not only be deleted but a very simple structure can be introduced making compliance of the regulations straight forward and easy to understand by management of listed companies. Certain other areas which need amendments have also been discussed. Chief amongst these are the provisions relating to consolidation of holdings, conditional tender offers, hostility to hostile acquisitions, definitional oddities, payment of control premium in the guise of non compete fees, treatment of differential voting rights, treatment of Global Depository Receipts and disclosure enhancements.

This paper does not try to portray a particular combination of numbers as the best possible set of trigger points and compulsory acquisition numbers but advocates that whatever numbers are adopted should not be changed for several decades. Arguments that state that the changing economic condition requires constant changes with these numbers, it is argued is wrong.

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